Spatial Correlation Analysis Among Land Values, Income Levels and Population Density

The correlation between market values of agricultural land and infrastructural, socio-demographic and productivity characteristics is widely recognized. In the present paper, the Authors intend to establish how the endowment of infrastructures, the levels of income and the demographic density are able to affect the land values of the corresponding territory. The analysis considers the market values of the vineyards, olive groves and irrigated crops, distributed throughout the Province of Salerno (Italy) and relevant for the overall value of agricultural production of the study area. The real estate appraisals, related to the last available survey of 2015, are provided by the Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of the Agrarian Economy (CREA), for each of the 17 agricultural regions in which the Province is divided. They are at first cartographically represented through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and then analyzed according to the geo-location both of the main urban centers and of the infrastructural network that characterizes the area. So, the distribution of values is explained in the light of established theories of Economic Geography. Then, the market values of agricultural soils are synchronously correlated with the surveys on the taxable income and the population density, respectively extracted from the data warehouse of the Ministry of Economy and Finance and of Italian Statistical Institute (Istat). Through the data processing and the thematic maps building, the correlations between the involved variables are quantified, in order to establishing functional relations that can be extended to other similar areas.