ECONOMICS UNIQUENESS

82 ■ THE ECONOMICS OF UNIQUENESS
• Local housing market (sale and rent);
• Transport and communications infrastructure (including mobility and
accessibility);
• Public services (health care, education, and research);
• Financial-economic system (incentives, taxes, and distributional aspects);
• Eff ects on the physical environment (such as pollution, congestion, and
energy use);
• Local social community (including security, social inclusion, and community
bonds); and
• Cultural context (performing arts and citizen’s participation in cultural
manifestations).
In general, economic valuation refers to the use value of a good. Nevertheless,
it ought to be recognized that in many cases there are also non-users—certainly
in the case of externalities of goods—who may attach a possible value to a cultural
asset, even though this asset is not actually visited by them. Economic actors may
be willing to leave the option of use or enjoyment open, now and in the future.
Th is has led to the notion of an option value (Weisbrod 1964); this concept may
have various meanings (Hyman and Hufschmidt 1983):
• Risk aversion: potential visitors are not sure that they will ever visit a given
heritage site or monument, but do not want to lose the possibility to visit it in
the near or distant future;
• Quasi-option demand: potential visitors have an interest in visiting the recreational
good concerned, but prefer to wait until suffi cient information is
available;
• Existence value: non-users attach a high value to the fact that the scarce sociocultural
asset is maintained, even when they do not plan to visit it;
• Vicarious use value: non-users want to keep a certain public good intact
because they like it when others can enjoy this good; and
• Bequest value: non-users see it as their moral responsibility to protect and
maintain a certain public good for future generations.
It is noteworthy that the concept of option value is strongly related to the
symbolic value of a good. It is also clear that there are many intangible elements
involved with the specifi c kind of use associated with a historic asset. However,
making a reliable monetary assessment of option values in the framework of
monuments is far from an easy task (Greenley et al. 1981).
It is important to note that especially the potential and actual functions of
cultural heritage assets—as far as they are perceived, appreciated, and lead to
behavioral changes of economic actors—have infl uenced the economic valuation
methods over the past decades. Th is has led to a wealth of approaches to valuation