Valuing the components of an archaeological site: An application of Choice Experiment to Vindolanda, Hadrian's Wall

Abstract

This article details the application of the economic valuation technique, Choice Experiment (CE), to an archaeological site to investigate and estimate the value visitors place on various attributes of the site. A questionnaire requiring visitors to make choices between scenarios containing various pre-determined options for the management and content of the site was administered. This allowed the tradeoffs respondents were prepared to make between different options for the management of the site to be observed, and subsequently the utility visitors derived from these different elements to be estimated. The results show that CE can be used to obtain estimates for visitor utility for various options of the management of the site. The methodology thus has a potential use in the management of archaeological and heritage sites.