Economic Valuation of Mining Heritage from a Recreational Approach: Application to the Case of El Soplao Cave in Spain (Geosite UR004)

Saúl Torres-Ortega,Raúl Husillos-Rodríguez,Julio De Luis-Ruiz,Pedro Díaz-Simal,Rubén Pérez-Álvarez

doi:10.3390/su8020185

Saúl Torres-Ortega, Raúl Husillos-Rodríguez + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su8020185

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Abstract

Heritage tourism can increase incomes and stimulate the economy in former mining areas. Recreational tourism is one of the main sources of value of heritage. People from urban areas are willing to pay for access to these tourism options. The measurement of the economic impact of this availability is one of the main problems to confront, due to the immeasurable possibilities of heritage resources. The use of non-market values and their estimation by means of revealed preference methods should help to assess the economic value of this sort of resources from a recreational perspective. The travel cost method (TCM) is widely used to value areas with recreational uses, such as lakes, beaches or forests, but there are not references to previous applications of this methodology in the field of mining heritage. In this work, TCM has been applied to obtain the economic value of El Soplao Cave (Geosite UR004, Cantabria, Spain) as a recreational site, providing an estimated result of 34,961,162 euros.

Highlights

Considering the definition provided by the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, which was signed in Paris in 1973, natural heritage includes all of the physical, biological and geological formations with an exceptional character, any habitat whose fauna or flora could be menaced and areas of scientific, aesthetic or conservational intrinsic value [1]
The travel cost method has been implemented to obtain the economic value of a heritage site
Adequate knowledge of the economic value of resources such as El Soplao Cave can help to increase their visibility by authorities, companies and policy makers

Summary

Introduction

Considering the definition provided by the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, which was signed in Paris in 1973, natural heritage includes all of the physical, biological and geological formations with an exceptional character, any habitat whose fauna or flora could be menaced and areas of scientific, aesthetic or conservational intrinsic value [1]. Its main objective is the development of a Global Network of Geological Sites, in order to promote the protection of these locations, due to their intrinsic values. The implementation of this Project started in Spain in 1996, the IGME (Instituto Geologico y Minero de España) being the organization responsible for this work. More than 200 geological sites are related to these contexts due to their mining character in Spain. It is worth highlighting Almaden, the Iberian Pyritic Belt and the Basque-Cantabrian Basin [3]. La Florida Zn-Pb Deposit and Cave El Soplao, which are coded as a single unit (UR004) in the Geosites Inventory and are objects of study in this research, belong to the latter

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