Conservation of maritime cultural heritage: A discrete choice experiment in a European Atlantic Region

The use of natural resources is often associated with a high component of cultural or passive values. Such is the case of the use of fishery resources using traditional techniques and the results in terms of heritage. Maritime cultural heritage as a public good requires public intervention to prevent deterioration that may lead to serious losses of social wellbeing. However, there are still few applications of economic valuation methods to quantify the social wellbeing derived from maritime conservation policies. Among the available techniques, discrete choice experiments seem to be a suitable methodology for the economic valuation of maritime cultural heritage, due to weight of non-use values on total value and to the multidimensional characteristic of the cultural heritage. The results obtained with this method to value a conservation policy of tangible and intangible heritage show positive willingness to pay towards the conservation of maritime cultural heritage, with higher willingness to pay for intangible attributes, although there is a significant heterogeneity in the values obtained depending upon the attitudes of individuals regarding culture. The results support public intervention to conserve maritime and fishing heritage and may be used to design appropriate policies and economic incentives for preservation.