Participants in local zoning for multifamily housing development and decision delay: Transaction cost and hierarchical governance

Local zoning decisions for multifamily housing development are understood as an outcome of interactions among multiple participants in the decision-making processes, including state and local government, local politics and professional planning groups. From the perspectives of transaction cost and hierarchical governance, a hierarchical linear model enables us to examine both local and state-level factors affecting local multifamily housing development within a single model. The analytical results show that the decision delay for multifamily housing zoning is better understood when we consider state smart growth effort, state authority over local land-use authority, majority agreement of managerial political actors, and professional engagement controlling for socio-physical contexts.