The value of public built cultural heritages in the Veneto Region: a hedonic valuation – VAPSA

Economic as well as urban development may depend on a great variety of factors. Among these, in Italy, built cultural heritage plays a key role given its quantity and outstanding quality. Cultural heritage is increasingly appreciated by civil society, and this enables us to assess its value, or better, its capacity to improve the quality of the context where it is located.

There are different ways to value the public benefits produced by cultural heritage amenities.
This research applies an hedonic approach. It is based on the assumption that real estate commodities are aggregates of different characteristics. These characteristics, although not sold separately, have a significant impact on market values. Hence, the value of services produced by cultural heritage can be estimated observing the variation in real estate values due to a variation of the quantity and quality of cultural heritage at the same location. The hedonic approach is therefore quite suitable for the valuation of public goods or services in urban areas with an active real estate market.

In this project, we survey the real estate values, the kind and number of cultural architectural amenities, the main social and economic characteristics at the municipality level, covering the whole Veneto Region, to estimate a hedonic price model to assess, if any, the economic impacts of cultural heritage on the real estate values. The research is organised in four major phases, in addition to a review of the literature on the most significant hedonic price applications to the valuation of cultural heritage. The first phase of the project’s activities is dedicated to a survey of real estate market values in all the municipalities of the Veneto Region. In the second phase, all the information on demographic, economic, social, environmental and territorial characteristics, which might have an impact on real estate values, is collected. Subsequently, the indicators for the quantity and quality of cultural heritage objects to be found in the territory are estimated for each municipality. Finally, an econometric function will be estimated in order to highlight the contribution and the significance of cultural heritage on real estate values.