Discussion and Methodological Implications

This chapter has investigated the statistical implications of having an uneven distribution of benefits from cultural heritage conservation. The data used are from a contingent valuation survey of Bulgarian monasteries that include World Heritage sites such as the Rila Monastery. The findings suggest that, on average, Bulgarians attribute a significantly positive value to the conservation or restoration of their Christian Orthodox monasteries (about 0.1% of per capita GNP). The implication is that damages to cultural goods are undesirable and that the public would be willing to pay positive amounts to avoid them or to slow the rate at which they occur. Non-use values were found to be important determinants o f WTP.

Results also show that nearly 40% o f respondents reported a zero WTP. This large proportion o f people stating zero values seems to be a recurring feature of cultural valuation studies. Some 15% of these responses can be considered to be protests against some aspect o f the survey instrument (i.e. a dislike of paying taxes or a rejection of the contingent scenario) and thus are not a reflection o f people’s true

preferences. The majority, however, are ‘genuine’ zero values arising from budget constraints, lack of interest in cultural issues and from the fact that cultural heritage preservation is typically ranked low amongst competing public issues, as is shown consistently by attitudinal questions. Hence, the welfare o f a significant proportion of the population seem to be unaffected by changes in these cultural assets.

The econometric models show that the positive estimated values are driven by the more educated and wealthier segments of the population, typically those with more diverse and intense cultural interests. In particular, education, cultural interests, a sense of responsibility over heritage protection and generosity are found to be significant determinants of the decision to pay for monasteries protection; while income, age, use of monasteries and a positive attitude towards conservation are the main factors affecting the size of the payment. The WTP for the protection of monasteries was found to be a luxury good with estimated income elasticities being above unity in all models. Additionally, the models also shed some light on the factors influencing the likelihood o f protesting: considering the questionnaire to be boring, objecting to particular aspects of the proposed programme, perceiving the state of monasteries conservation to be good and being a male were all found to increase the probability o f casting a protest vote.

The concentration o f values at the lower end of the distribution has important statistical implications as discussed in this chapter. In general, the standard statistical models used to analyse WTP are biased as they do not take into account (i) the censored or truncated nature of the distribution; and (ii) the presence of protest votes. This chapter illustrated ways of dealing with WTP data in the presence o f a significant proportion of zeros. It also showed the importance of identifying protest bidders and \/ modelling them separately.

These results are instrumental in informing future research in the area o f cultural heritage. Given the expectation of a non-trivial number of zero responses, future surveys should incorporate in the experimental design questions especially designed for non-participants in order to increase our understanding about the motivations and reasons for non-participation. In particular, it may be relevant to try to elicit whether the proposed change is neutral or actually welfare reducing; that is, it may be of interest to try to distinguish those who don’t care enough about the issue to pay for it

from those who may actually be opposed to the proposed degree of management of cultural resources, that may change the original materials and appearance. It would be interesting to determine to what extent conservation is a ‘good’ and the point at which, if at all, it becomes a ‘bad’. Moreover, the value of utility reducing changes could also conceivably be estimated.

Invalid bids may also occur amongst participants. Of particular worry when evaluating single heritage sites is the issue o f embedding, that is, of respondents evaluating a larger set o f cultural goods than those intended by the researchers. Future research efforts in this area should address this issue explicitly. Statistically, this adds an additional hurdle to the model: having decided not to protest against the survey and to participate in the hypothetical market, respondents may also face a decision about the scope of the good to be valued.

One possible way to minimise the incidence of protest votes and, at the same time, increase the understanding about the value of particular characteristics o f cultural heritage, is to use other stated preference techniques such as the contingent ranking method and its variants. As mentioned in Chapter 1, these techniques permit several conservation programmes, with varying scopes or characteristics, to be valued simultaneously, thus explicitly accounting for substitutability between programmes and helping to reduce the incidence of embedding. At the same time, not only the value o f a whole conservation programme can be elicited but also the benefits of particular aspects o f the programme can be quantified. The merits of these alternative techniques are explored in Part B of this dissertation.