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In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States amended more than two centuries of eminent domain law to allow the government to take private property for the purpose of economic development. For business, the legal change impacts the way managers plan for property ownership, including acquisition and long-term use. Quantitative methods were used to measure the degree of association between the specific characteristics of the municipal public administrator and the willingness of the administrator to use eminent domain for the purpose of economic development. Since the Kelo case, and the new legal standard it establishes, is so new, there is little empirical research which examines the relationship between the administrator's characteristics and the willingness to use eminent domain. The significance of this research is that it establishes a baseline for measuring the potential impact an administrator's understanding of eminent domain may have on the willingness to use eminent domain. For this study, the postulate is that an administrator has an increased likelihood in using eminent domain when they have a high level of knowledge about eminent domain. The research was conducted using survey methods to measure the characteristics of public administrators in a threestate region of the United States. The study revealed a strong association (r(130) = -.757, p < .05) between the administrator's level of knowledge about eminent domain and the willingness to use eminent domain; however, rather than the expected positive correlation the data revealed that the more education an administrator had the less likely they would be to use eminent domain. The significance of the research is that as a first line of empirical data in this area, the first steps have been taken in understanding the potential relationship between understanding and use when it comes to eminent domain under the Kelo decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]