What Happens Without Conservation? The Prospect of Heritage Loss in Contingent Valuation

Economic valuation of heritage conservation depends on what respondents expect to happen without the implementation of a proposed intervention, yet this no-program counterfactual is often left implicit. We examine whether explicitly directing respondents to consider potential heritage loss affects stated willingness to pay (WTP) for renovation of a building and whether the contribution of information about adaptive reuse depends on whether such loss enters the valuation decision. A contingent valuation survey of 452 adult residents living near Pückler Palace, a deteriorating historic building in Poland, used a 2 × 2 randomized design combining a loss-consideration prompt with information about a genuine proposal to adapt the renovated palace as the new premises of the Museum of Ceramics. WTP was elicited as the maximum mandatory one-off levy respondents would support within an advisory-referendum framework. Among respondents not assigned to the loss-prompt treatment, a post-valuation question identified spontaneous consideration of heritage loss. Two-part models separated the probability of positive WTP from the amount stated among positive responses. Randomized treatment estimates indicated higher WTP under the loss prompt when reuse information was absent. The unconditional mean difference was positive but imprecisely estimated, while the corresponding difference among positive-WTP respondents was statistically significant. In the conditional models, respondents assigned to the loss prompt had approximately twice the odds of positive WTP and a 61% higher conditional geometric mean of positive WTP than that of unprompted respondents who did not report spontaneous loss consideration. Among unprompted respondents, spontaneous loss consideration—reported by 54%—was associated with a 92% higher conditional geometric mean of positive WTP than in unprompted respondents who did not report such consideration. Evidence that reuse information contributed more when loss was not considered was suggestive rather than conclusive. The findings show that common information about an asset’s current condition need not produce a common understanding of its expected future without the proposed intervention. Stated preference surveys should therefore specify this trajectory with sufficient clarity and credibility that respondents are evaluating a common underlying policy change.