**2. Methodological chapter**

This chapter was motivated by three major objectives: to examine the general application of the agricultural zoning to a country; to examine the adjusted application of agricultural zoning to Thailand; and to analyze the historical tendency of agricultural zoning policy and propose an additional tool that could bring success to the objectives of the agricultural zoning program used in Thailand.

The method employed for this chapter is historical research method. The method examines an account of what has happened in the past and presents events in the context of the present condition. It helps to reflect and provide possible answers to current issues and problems. The past events reveal the general and the particular in historical phenomena and give an understanding of various development stages of the event. The method helps to capture the nuance and idea of the event and helps to answer the questions: where have we come from, where are we now, and where are we going? [8].

and Barrows [14] indicated that the effect of agricultural zoning on land price depends on the location and characteristics of the parcel. The agricultural zoned parcel that is located far from the city center is found to have a higher price than the agricultural zoned parcels close to the city. The result is in line with [15] who found that the land zoned for low-density development has a significant decrease in value, while the land zoned for high density or for community has a significant increase in value. More recent work of [16] also showed that agricultural zoning can be an effective policy for protecting productive farmland, while in the evidence from Japan, Nishihara [17] showed that agricultural land zoning policy has a great impact on land value increase and discourages the landowner from cultivating the land. A small gap in the anticipation of land policy to convert agricultural zone to residential development zone prevents landowner from selling or leasing the land to a more efficient farmer. Some studies based on this concept indicated that the zoning policy is not an effective tool for managing land use. Mark and Goldberg [18] examined the relationship between rezoning and changes in property values and the ability of zoning to mitigate externalities and found that rezoning does not necessarily lead to changes in land use and value. In the evidence from the United States, Pogodzinski and Sass [19] showed that zoning has no effect on house price but instead the minimum lot sizes, minimum side yard restriction, and maximum height restrictions affect house price, suggesting

Agricultural Zoning and Policy Conflict: Thailand's Experience

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80262

57

The other approach that uses to evaluate the effectiveness of zoning measure is the outcome approach. The approach is a direct proxy on land-use change as it compares the real physical change before and after the implementation of the policy. Not much research has been done on this approach. In England, Coughlin [20] found that agricultural zoning significantly reduces the sales of farmland to the conversion purpose, while in the evidence from the United States, Kline and Alig [21] found that the zoning reduces the likelihood of development on the land located within forest use, but the result for exclusive farm use zones is inconclusive. Levine [22] examines the effect of the growth-control enactment between 1979 and 1988 on net housing construction between 1980 and 1990. The study showed that local growth-management measures significantly displaced new construction such as rental housing and an expansion of the metropolitan areas into the interiors of the state. The measures have strong impact on low-income households and minorities, but not all growth-control measures were associated with this change, and the strong effect was found in the zoning measure. Cho and Wu [23] also adopts this concept to evaluate the interactions between residential development, land-use regulations, and public financial impacts in California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. The study found that the land-use regulation decreases land development, longrun expenditure and property tax at the higher cost of housing prices, and property tax, while land-use regulations, land development, public expenditure, and property tax are affected by population, geographic location, land quality, housing prices, and the risks and costs of development. Mayer and Somerville [24] found that land-use regulation lowers the steady-state level of new construction. Metropolitan areas with more extensive regulations have up to 45% fewer starts and price elasticities that are more than 20% lower than those in less regulated markets. Kuminoff and Sumner [25] found that population growth and edge length of urban interface are statistically significant and positively correlated with conversion. Zoning and development restrictions were not significant explanatory variables for conversion. More strong result was found in the work of [26]. They evaluated the efforts of Utah County to discourage the farmland

that the zoning method does not affect land use.

The secondary sources which include historical literatures in agricultural zoning, research papers, Thailand agricultural acts, government office reports, and online news were used as a tool to gain an experiential sense of the past and provide policy design resource. In the previous section, the review of general application of agricultural zoning program reveals that the method is actually one of the kinds of property rights, and the general objectives to apply the agricultural zoning of a country are to preserve the agricultural area and ensure food security. In the next section, the review of agricultural zoning performance paper in various countries will be discussed. This step helped to establish a background of the historical analysis into the policy design process.
