Drivers of Urban Land Investments by Private Owners in a Developing Country :

Abstract

Favorable land policy, proper urban planning, and land tenure security seem to correlate with increased willingness of private landowners to undertake land development investments. This paper employed a logit model to examine the influence of measures of land tenure security, economic status, age, and gender on the land development propensities of urban landowners in Kabale Municipality in Southwestern Uganda. The results show that improvements in tenure security and the economic status of the landowners increase the odds of active land development investments by 67% and 3% respectively, while gender and age, do not. In policy terms, these findings underscore the importance of land tenure security derived from effective property rights policy as a key motivating factor in urban land development investments. Finally, the paper underscores the urgency of appropriate policy to manage urbanization, and avoid rising urban congestion, slums and squalor in Uganda