Economics and Culture Research
Heritage Valuation Project
Project Outline
This project is concerned with the valuation of historic heritage places. Such places include:- structures, i.e. the built heritage
- monuments
- landscapes or cultural sites
- and groupings of buildings or sites such as historic town centres.
The project is being carried out under a grant from the Environmental Economics Research Hub of the Commonwealth Environmental Research Facilities (CERF), administered through the Australian National University. Why is this project being funded through a research funding program that is devoted to environmental economics?
The answer lies in the fact that valuation methods used in environmental economics are directly applicable to heritage, because heritage is a paradigm case of what has come to be known in economics as cultural capital. This class of asset bears strong similarities with natural capital, the asset class with which environmental economics is concerned. Both are inherited from the past, both impose a duty of care (i.e. raise issues of intergenerational equity), both are characterised by non-use as well as use values, and both are key concepts in defining sustainability. Thus techniques that have been developed in environmental economics for assessing the value of natural resources such as wilderness areas, coral reefs, national parks, etc. are directly applicable to the valuation of cultural heritage.
The motivation for this project in a practical sense has to do with heritage policy. Heritage is owned both privately and publicly. Regardless of ownership, there are likely to be strong public-good or externality elements in the value of heritage, and hence there is an important public interest involved in its conservation and management. In 2005 the Productivity Commission held an enquiry into the built heritage in Australia which raised a number of issues, including how to reconcile public and private interests in this field. An important task of this project is to sort out and rationalise these interests, such that a sensible approach to assessing the full value of heritage can be developed.
In addition to its concern with economic valuation, the project also has a strong parallel focus on means to assess the cultural value of heritage according to various criteria of heritage significance. Ultimately, an important aim of the project is to explore robust objective means for linking the cultural and economic valuation methods developed, such that relationships between economic value and cultural value can be more clearly understood.
The project team comprises:
- Professor David Throsby (Macquarie University, Team Leader)
- Dr Vinita Deodhar (NSW Department of Environment)
- Dr Bronwyn Hanna (Heritage Branch, NSW Department of Planning)
- Dr Bronwyn Jewell (Qld Department of Communities)
- Dr Zena O’Connor (Honorary Associate, University of Sydney)
- Ms Anita Zednik (PhD student, Economics Dept., Macquarie University).
Enquiries may be directed to David Throsby.