Sense of Place and Willingness to Pay: Complementary Concepts When Evaluating Contributions of Cultural Resources to Regional Communities

Sense of place and willingness to pay: complementary concepts when evaluating contributions of cultural resources to regional communities, Regional Studies. While the economics literature recognizes the limitations with solely using non-market valuation to understand how cultural resources contribute to their communities, there has been limited use of other approaches. In this study a sense of place scale developed in the environmental psychology literature is used together with contingent valuation to measure the contribution of cultural resources in three regional towns. Using a survey of 354 households, the relationships between visitation of cultural resources, sense of place (place identity and place dependence) and willingness to pay are examined. Visitation to cultural resources is shown to be related to sense of place. In addition, sense of place is demonstrated to be related to willingness to pay. The results imply that the community value of cultural resources is associated with the mix of cultural resources which encourages higher visitation and enhanced sense of place, rather than expenditure on cultural resources alone.