Economics Of Conservation Of Built Heritage : A Cv Study Of Some Heritage Sites Of Calcutta

The ‘Expert Committee on Built Heritage’ marks an important step as the first official acknowledgement of the need to preserve heritage buildings and sites in Calcutta. However, it neglects the question of economic viability of preservation programmes. One reason for this is incomplete markets resulting in an underestimation of the benefits of conserving a site. This paper argues that the Contingent Valuation method based on hypothetical markets can be used to supplement actual market based analysis. This has been demonstrated in a survey of four heritage sites of Calcutta. Based on TOBIT models the factors determining the WTP for the sites have been identified, and used to estimate the Total Economic Value of the sites.