OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

2. LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BASED ON ATTRACTING VISITORS AND TOURISTS
of future visitors or tourists once these activities are actually being offered. The idea
is to determine the price that potential users of the service would be prepared to
pay, and then calculate whether the returns will cover the investment and operating
costs of the planned cultural and tourist facilities. It is therefore both a modest and
a delicate method: modest, for it is interested only in direct effects, and delicate, for
it is based on the reliability of “contingent” responses. Although this approach is often
challenged, it is in increasing use internationally: examples are to be found in the
studies by Navrud on Trondheim Cathedral (Navrud et al.1992), Willis on Durham
Cathedral (Willis, 1994), Martin on the Quebec Museum of Civilisation (Martin, 1994),
Hansen on the Royal Copenhagen Theatre (Hansen, 1997), and Santagata and Signorello
on the City of Naples (Santagata and Signorello, 1998).
The contingent value approach
There are two ways of pursuing this approach, depending on whether we start with
the willingness to pay for a good, or with the willingness to forgo an existing good, for
example the view of a monument.
With the road improvement project at Stonehenge, the idea was to build a tunnel
more than 2 km long to carry a road that passed through the site but disfigured
it and made visiting it awkward and unpleasant. Leaving the road on the surface,
on the other hand, had the advantage of letting drivers view the site from their
car. Both approaches were combined in determining the contingent values. People
visiting the site were asked what they would be willing to pay to see the road and
its attendant nuisances disappear, while drivers were asked how much of a
disadvantage it would be for them to pass by underground and be unable to see
Stonehenge at all (Maddison & Mourato, 2002).
As results may differ depending on whether we focus on willingness to pay or on
willingness to accept, a third method, known as “paired comparison”, has recently
been proposed (Peterson & Brown, 1998). The respondent is confronted with different
possible combinations of services or money, and is asked to choose between a certain
amount of a good and a sum of money that varies with each choice. As long as the
money offered is less than a certain amount of the good, the respondent will prefer
the good. But when the money exceeds the value of the good, he will refuse the good
and take the money. The comparison point at which behaviour changes shows the
amount of money by which the good is valued.
This method, known as “willingness to choose”, was introduced by Kling, Revier
and Sable (Kling, Revier & Sable, 2000). They were asked to prepare a referendum
to be held under the State of Colorado’s 1992 “Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights”, according
to which, when a local government plans to undertake a new project and finance
it from existing tax revenues, it must offer taxpayers the choice between going
CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005 53