OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

2. LOCAL DEVELOPMENT BASED ON ATTRACTING VISITORS AND TOURISTS
• the existence value attached to a renovated Medina at Fez by tourists who
visit Morocco but have never been to Fez.
A survey consisting of 16 questions was administered to tourists, together with
documentation on the features of the Medina before and after renovation 43 . On this
basis, visitors to the Medina were asked if they were ready to pay a charge to visit
Fez, in the form of a special tax levy on their hotel bills. For visitors to Morocco
excluding Fez, they were asked if they were willing to pay a departure tax to help maintain
the Medina, even though they had not visited it. These charges were defined as a
range starting at US$25, and the upper limit was significantly higher for Fez visitors
than for others (US$200 versus $100).
The survey revealed that visitors to the Medina were willing on average to pay $70,
which would yield revenues of $11 million. Other tourists were ready to pay $30 on average,
for total yield of $47 million. The difference between the average dispositions to pay
is logical enough, for visitors to the site are likely more sensitive to the ongoing
deterioration of the Medina and its need for renovation. More surprising is the attitude
of non-visitors to Fez. They seem to attach a high “existence value” to having the option
of visiting Fez sometime in the future. But we may question the value of people’s
willingness to pay for a good that they are hardly aware of and that they will never visit.
- Studies also provide convincing support for a conclusion of another kind.
Contingent values will be even higher for people who are bigger consumers of
culture. In their 2004 analysis of the renovation of Arab towers in the Valencia
region of Spain, Saz Salazar and Montagud Marques found that the people who
expressed the highest contingent valuation for these towers were those who
were already heavily “into culture” (Saz Salazar and Montagud Marques, 2004).
This is not a reassuring conclusion, for it shows that the demand for cultural goods
is directly linked to the amount of cultural capital that individuals have already
accumulated. It points, then, to the limitations of cultural policies, but at the
same time it reinforces the notion of the specificity and importance of cultural
capital, as defined some time ago by Bourdieu.
The multipliers
When activities already exist, the most frequently used means for identifying the
local development effects of culture is the multiplier tool. It is based on the notion
that purchases of goods or services from a business will lead it to make purchases
from other businesses, and so on in a cascading effect.
- The assumption is that local businesses are mutually interdependent, although
this will not be true to the extent that these businesses must turn to firms
outside the territory to procure goods and services.
56 CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005