| Historical relic is an important integral part of the human heritages and it is also considered as the intangible carrier for human history,culture as well as spirit.And yet the historical relics are commonly deemed as valuable nonrenewable treasures.At the same time,the cultural heritages could become a valuable tourism resource so as to be able to form a new economic growth point.As such,during the process of exploiting the historical relics for the purpose of tourism development,not only the great attention should be attached to the tourism development,but also vital efforts should be made towards the historical relics protection in order to turn them into the sustainable tourism resources.However,at the present time,there is big gap of the economic valuation research being focused on the historical relics in China,which greatly hampers effective tourism resource exploitation as well as its sustainable development.Thus,it is both theoretically imperative and empirically essential to carry out research on the issue of proper tourism resource exploration of the historical relics and cultural heritages.This dissertation aims at valuing historical relics using nonmarket valuation theory and methods by taking Shenyang Dongling park as a pilot study area.The economic valuation work involves valuing both those important park attributes as well as the total economic value of the park.The concrete study content of the dissertation can be organized as follows:First,beside the literature review,the research started with identifying those most important park characteristics and relevant concepts of economic value such as tourists' willingness to pay and consumer surplus.Literature review revealed five most important cultural park attributes which play a critical role in attracting visitors'interests and subsequently the levels of their willingness to pay for the quality improvement of the park attributes.These five attributes are the status of the relic preservation,type of cultural heritages,the numerical amount of the relics,interpretation system,and traffic condition.Each of them created a significant influence to the historical relics tourism demand.According to the estimated economic value results,there is a relatively larger gap of value gain to be exploited,meaning there is a fair amount of economic value which has not been fully reaped.For example,the amount of a visitor's willingness to pay could be surged to ?407 from the current level of ?55 as the current status of the park were enhanced to the level of a better condition,implying for 7 folds of increase.Basing on a total of 200 thousand travelers to the park annually,this can be translated into ?77.63 million,which is ?66.54 million higher than the current value being reaped by the park management through selling tickets.As far as individual attribute is concerned,the three attributes out of the five at present condition exhibit a negative amount of economic value,including relics preservation,vegetation coverage,and numerical amount of relics,which imply that the tourists are not satisfied with the current condition of these three park attributes.In comparison,the tourists are satisfied with the interpretation system and traffic condition on the park site.Second,owing to the consideration that most historical relics have a typical nonmarket characteristics,it is very difficult if not possible to estimate its true economic value through market transaction activities.As such,in this study,the contingent valuation method(CVM)was used in estimating the economic value of the historical relics of the tourism resources.The CVM approach requires careful survey form design in order to acquire reliable the first hand data from the visitor survey,and then the data can be utilized for parameter estimation in our case based on Logit model.The results show that among the three groups of beneficial park visitors,nonlocal visitors display the highest level of WTP,following by the inside city visitors and the local visitors,respectively with each of WTP being estimated at ? 57,? 14 and ? 10,respectively.In addition,relative to outsider Shenyang city visitors,the city local visitors attached a relatively lower significance to the relic preservation than the outsiders did.This may imply that the outsiders are more interested in visiting the historical relic park,which might be due to a relatively higher level of enthusiastic attitude upheld by those outside visitors.Third,this study used the economic valuation results of the historical relics integrating with price elasticity analysis and then we combined those results with the benefit and cost analysis in order to disclose whether it is feasible for the city government to invest a significant amount of money for conducting a massive scale park protection and restoration effort.The price elasticity analysis shows that there is big difference on the price change sensitivity between inside city visitors and outside city visitors and yet the price elasticity exhibits a ladder shape where it appears inelastic for the outsider city visitors as the admission fee is raised to ? 90.However,as the entrance fee is surged to more than ?90,the price elasticity turns out to be elastic.Thus,it seems that the? 90 of entrance fee is the best price to be charged by the park management.By contrast,the local visitors exhibit a higher price elasticity even when the admission fee being charged is in a much lower level.For example,to the local visitors the ? 40 of entrance price is the choked price or the uptick level already.Any price which is higher than this level,it will subject to those visitors'for abandoning the park visit,simply because the price is too high to be acceptable for them.Based on the benefit-cost analysis results of the proposed three park restoration plans,the Plan I seems the best one which requires 10 years of time for the park to pay back the entire investment and operation costs,thus to be able to shirk off any government financial budget as it has been prevailed over the long period of time in past.As a result,the park will be able to stride on a sustainable development path,which not only could relieve the government's financial and fiscal burdens but also create the capacity for the vast majority of visitors to enjoy the historical relics tourism. |
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