Luis César Herrero Prieto

The valuation of historical sites: a case study of Valdivia, Chile

The economic valuation of cultural heritage is an area of increasing interest and an important research topic in the emerging field of cultural economics. Many services and values associated with cultural heritage are not traded in markets, and their estimation requires methods developed for the valuation of non-market goods, such as those used in environmental economics. This paper applies the contingent valuation method with double dichotomous choice to estimate the value of historical sites in the city of Valdivia, Chile. The valuation exercise was implemented by designing a hypothetical guided walking tour to a cluster of historical sites in the city centre, and surveying tourists visiting the city during the summer of 2004. Parametric and non-parametric statistical methods were used to estimate the survival distribution and the mean and median estimates of the willingness-to-pay (WTP). The study emphasizes the importance of explicitly treating heterogeneous preferences and the sensitivity of the survival distribution to the estimation methods used.

Contingent valuation and motivation analysis of tourist routes Application to the cultural heritage of Valdivia (Chile)

The purpose of this research is to determine the economic value assigned to the historical heritage of Valdivia (Chile) by tourists visiting the city. For this, the contingent valuation method is used, proposing a scenario of guided tours suitable to attempt to evaluate physically dispersed urban heritage which is also difficult to define as a tourism product, given its diversity. A double-bounded dichotomous choice format is employed to formulate the valuation question, and willingness to pay (WTP) is estimated using parametric techniques. The study is complemented by segmentation analysis for the main reasons why tourists visit the city of Valdivia, applying the contingency tables method. The results suggest that there is no statistically significant difference in the WTP for the three historical and cultural routes offered and show a higher WTP for foreign tourists compared with domestic tourists as well as for those with higher incomes. Moreover, segmentation analysis shows that the level of education and origin of the tourists interviewed are significant variables in characterizing the reason for their visit.