Research on the Values of Heritage

Material heritage traditionally has been valued and conserved because of its cultural attributes—the beauty, artistry, stories, or other collective meaning associated with a place, building, or object. Economic values and motivations are also important factors in heritage conservation and in contemporary society often strongly influence how heritage is valued and conserved. The Research on the Values of Heritage project sought to bridge economic and cultural approaches to valuing heritage.

• A 1998 conference on the role of values in heritage conservation
• A 1998 meeting on the economics of heritage conservation that resulted in a 1999 report entitled Economics and Heritage Conservation
• A 2000 workshop on assessing the values of heritage that yielded a publication entitled Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage
• A 2000 report entitled Values and Heritage Conservation, which includes an annotated bibliography, by conservation professionals and scholars from the social sciences and humanities on the values and benefits of heritage conservation
• Case studies on Chaco Culture National Historical Park; Grosse Île and the Irish Memorial National Historic Site; Port Arthur Historic Site; and Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site published as individual case studies and as the single volume, Heritage Values in Site Management: Four Case Studies

Conservation professionals and decision-makers increasingly must confront economic realities or argue on the basis of economic considerations—or both. But the value of heritage cannot be measured simply in terms of price. Economics and policy decisions are usually thought to be outside the domain of conservation discourse and practice.

The Research on the Values of Heritage project aimed to fill a gap in the conservation field's body of knowledge and to advance our ability to work constructively with economic ideas, tools, and forces. It built on the substantial body of work in cultural economics (which draws heavily from ecological economics) as well as the conservation field's growing awareness of the importance of values, markets, and other social forces in our work—and the need for an integrated approach to conservation. The project furthered this integration through a multidisciplinary program of research, discussion, application, and dissemination.