Descentralización del Ministerio de la Mujer y Desarrollo Social

As highlighted in chapter 2, most of the existing studies on the importance of cultural resources either ignore or marginalise the role of non-use elements of value. Examples of this can be seen in Myerscough (1988), but also in the recently released Warwick Commission Report (2015). Figure 2.1 presented a visual framing of different types of value which, despite being originally developed around the importance of green space, was considered to fit with the valuation of cultural resources. This graphic conceptualisation included both use and non-use typologies of value, reflecting a distinction discussed and largely accepted in the wider cultural valuation literature. In particular, Ridge et al (2007:21) considers non-use value to be an important feature in the cultural sector, as it includes some of the unique benefits generated by culture.

Both Throsby (2006) and Klamer (2002, 2004) describe how intrinsic forms of worth are particularly relevant to culture, with the latter suggesting that any attempt to capture the importance of cultural resources that does not engage with them would not be complete or indeed meaningful.

However, despite these recognitions and the lively debate that preceded and followed them, most existing work in this field focuses almost exclusively on the utility or benefits that individuals or wider society derive from cultural resources. Thus, although studies attempting to capture the economic and social benefits of investments in culture have proliferated, they ultimately failed to capture factors such as the pride people feel towards a local cultural organisation or the importance people attach to the existence of heritage buildings.

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Ultimately, this lack of attention derives from the complex, often intangible nature of non- use values. As mentioned in chapter 2, section 1, the main driver of existing attempts to capture the importance of cultural resources has been the need of policy makers in local and national governments to make informed funding decisions. This adds a further level of complication, as the complexity in capturing and measuring these types of value is exacerbated by the difficulty in reporting them in a language that can be utilised in policy-making (O’Brien, 2010).

The results presented in chapter 6 of this thesis showed how the use and non-use elements of value embraced different aspects of the importance attributed to cultural resources in the two case studies. Statistical analyses presented in Table 6.1 showed that frequency of use was directly linked to how every type of cultural resource was valued in both cities, with the only exception of local shops. This consistent link, together with the statistical significance and strength of the observed relationship, could be seen to show that use-related value represents the main component of the total valuation, thus endorsing the economic-driven approach of Myerscough (1988), Plaza (2006) or Noonan (2002).

However, a significant difference also emerged both in the levels of use of all types of resources and in the strength of the relationship between frequency of use and valuation across the two case studies. Specifically, all resources were more frequently used in Edinburgh, with the exception of community activities, and the coefficients linking use to value were also consistently and significantly higher in the capital. This points to a lesser incidence of use-related values in the total valuation of cultural resources in Dundee, which in turn suggests that the less tangible, non-use values play a larger role in this city.

This lesser incidence of frequency of use on the overall valuation of cultural resourced in Dundee resonates with what argued in section 7.2.1: as the dominant notion of what constitutes culture and what its role is in society appears to be less linked to personal enjoyment and more related to the shaping of community identity and social relations, it makes sense that cultural resources were valued regardless of their use. Conversely, the more central role attributed in Edinburgh to museums and performing arts in defining local culture entails a higher importance of use- related value, as personal participation and enjoyment is seen as the dominant facet of cultural value.

Therefore, although investigations (such as those mentioned in Chapter 2 by Myerscough 1988; Matarasso, 1996a; or the Warwick Report, 2015) have managed to produce valuable insights on the immediate tangible benefits linked to cultural resources, they cannot be considered to have

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produced a complete or satisfactory account of the importance of such resources. Furthermore, this research has shown how an investigation limited to direct and indirect use value, which could be suited to a context similar to one case study, namely Edinburgh, would yield insufficient and potentially misleading insights in the other.

In actual fact, such partial investigation in Dundee would have reported a lower valuation of cultural resources and lower frequency of use of all but one type of facilities. This could have led to the simplistic conclusion that cultural resources were held to a limited importance, while a deeper and more contextualised analysis have shown how this is not necessarily the case. The low value assigned to the “culture & leisure” label is potentially the result of a specific issue in the design of the questionnaire interacting with the particular notion of culture held in this city, while the lower attendance of cultural facilities is not a reliable index of the importance assigned to them, as non-use facets of value hold more importance here than in other contexts.

7.5 Contingent Valuation

Despite being hotly contested, contingent valuation techniques in the have seen a steady increase in the number of their applications in the cultural sector (Diamond and Hausman, 1994). Examples of studies attempting to use such methodologies to capture the value of cultural goods and resources were presented in section 2.5.1. The focus of this section will be to evaluate how these techniques performed in this study and, critically, whether their integration with qualitative methods of investigation has been beneficial.

Key to the understanding of these issues is the framing of the limitations that contingent valuation studies normally have. Firstly, stated preference techniques are predicated on a model of a society comprised of individual decision makers who behave rationally, striving to maximise their own utility in the face of known constraints (Throsby, 2003). This first constraint hides a deeper basic assumption underpinning most CV studies: that the study of value consists of the study of economic choices, transactions and behaviours. As such, studies applying contingent valuation to the cultural sector normally attempt to capture a final, single monetary valuation

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of the studied resource. This tendency was openly refuted at the start of this thesis, and identified as itself one of the main barriers to a more productive discussion of cultural value. Consequently, this study attempted to use contingent valuation to highlight patterns of preference and relative value, deliberately avoiding the monetisation of results. In this respect, the use of these techniques proved extremely fruitful, allowing the study of several components of the same family of resources, and the investigation of which were more or less important to the residents of the two cities.

Furthermore, the patterns of relative valuation derived from the application of CV were instrumental in the examination of the way that culture is conceptualised in the two case studies. Being able to observe and analyse the way in which respondents trade off one attribute for the others revealed important information on which elements of culture are considered pivotal, and which are less important. In this sense, the lack of a final, monetary value was of no detriment to the explanatory power of the chosen methodology. Indeed, it responded both to the general concerns relative to the appropriateness of attempting such single-value characterisations (Holden,2006, Throsby, 2003) and to the more specific points raised by Diamond and Housman (2004) in connection with the methodological fine-tuning and reliability of the technique. In connection with this, another way in which the selected techniques revealed fruitful was in the possibility to test their reliability against each other. Using two different techniques, namely paired comparison and scoring by token allocation, to encourage the same sample of participants to value the same choice set, this study was able to triangulate the results and test their validity.

However, the two principal characteristics that rendered this research unique in comparison with the other attempts to apply CV in the cultural sector were its adoption of a mixed methodological approach and the fact that, rather than attempting the investigation of a single museum or heritage site, it focused on culture as a whole and the way it is understood and valued.

In terms of the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis, this research has shown how, despite the implicit problematic ontological and epistemological negotiations, this approach opened numerous investigatory alleys and allowed for far deeper insights to be generated than would have been possible with the sole adoption of contingent valuation. By deliberately halting the quantitative side of data analysis before it reached the monetary stage, the analytical space was created for the interpretation of the observed preference patterns

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through the deeper and richer qualitative insight. The result has been the production of a more meaningful and contextualised piece of research than would have been the case with the adoption of the sole quantitative analysis, providing a “sum greater than the two parts” indicated by Greene as the aim of a “more significant research challenge” (2008, p. 14).

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8 Conclusions

8.1 Introduction

This chapter presents the key findings of this research, assessing the extent to which the thesis’ aim and related research questions were met and the contributions made to the wider body of knowledge on cultural valuation. The chapter is divided into three sections: the first reiterates the aim and research questions addressed in this thesis, the second presents the key insights of the study and the third considers the implications for academic knowledge and policy-making, including possible avenues for future research.