Valuing cultural heritage: the social benefits of restoring and old Arab tower

Cultural heritage protection is a key issue around the world today. In this paper, the contingent valuation method has been applied to obtain the social benefits that stem from the restoration of an old Arab tower in the Valencia Region of Spain. Due to a current and past lack of protection, the remains of this historic monument are few. Therefore, 252 individuals were randomly interviewed. On conducting our study we distinguished between low, average, and high consumers of cultural goods. Our main finding is that the mean willingness to pay (WTP) is considerably higher for the second group. To give further credence to this observation both parametric and non-parametric approaches were employed and these yielded similar results. Finally, two equations were estimated in order to ratify the results obtained from a theoretical point of view. (c) 2005 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.