Use value of cultural experiences: A comparison of contingent valuation and travel cost

• CVM and TCM are applied to assess the value of cultural experiences.
• Experiences consist of core cultural experiences and of other valuable experiences.
• TCM is an inappropriate measure if the total experience consists of multiple experiences.
• CVM allows measures of the core cultural experience and other experiences separately.

Few applications to assess the value of cultural experiences exist. This is particularly frustrating for cultural institutions, as it provides them with few opportunities to reveal their importance in terms of attractiveness and thus what drives tourism demand. This study applies the travel cost method (TCM) and contingent valuation method (CVM) to assess the value of two rural cultural institutions in order to compare the results of the valuation methods.The results reveal that visitor experiences consist of a core cultural experience as well as other valuable experiences before and after. Whereas CVM allows for a valuation of the core cultural experience separately from other experiences, the TCM is limited to an overall assessment. The TCM is therefore an inappropriate measure of the value of the cultural experiences when the total experience includes several other experiences.If visitors travel for the sake of only one cultural experience, TCM may be preferable due to its simple applicability and cost efficiency. If, however, as is most often the case, a cultural experience is part of a bundle of experiences, the application of CVM is recommendable. This is also the case, if only visitors who state the cultural experience to be the primary reason for travelling are included.