The Centre for Research in Environmental Appraisal and Management (CREAM), in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, was awarded a three-year Research Fellowship in the Economic Impact of Arts and Humanities, funded jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Board and Arts Council England.
The aim of the Fellowship was to develop and test new and innovative aspects of economic analysis and methods to evaluate the economic impact and value of arts and humanities, including arts and humanities research, to society. The study analysed the impact and value in a number of different arts, culture, and humanities subject areas, including archaeology, museums and galleries, film, and theatre. The Fellowship was held by Dr José Grisolía. The research was directed by Professor Ken Willis.
Research Context
The socio-economic impact of the arts has become an increasingly important rationale for public investment in the cultural sector over the last two decades. However, current literature shows that neither the funding bodies nor their clients have managed to establish a methodology robust enough to be accepted and consistently applied across a wide range of publicly-funded arts organisations. With the growing demand for evidence-based policy making, and in the context of the competition the arts world has to face for limited resources, there is clearly a need to elaborate an economic appraisal and evaluation procedure that is methodologically sound and that can inform the claims made by and for the sector.
Research Focus
The research focused on using a range of complementary methodological approaches that have been developed in environmental economics, applying and developing these techniques to examine the utility, economic value, and market share of particular arts and humanities goods to individuals and groups, and to society and the economy. Existing economic valuation methodologies encompass:
• Market valuation techniques: entrance charges, production costs, replacement costs, conservation costs, and averting and mitigation expenditure to prevent cultural goods being conserved for present and future generations;
• Revealed preference methods: travel-cost methods, including individual visitor count models, to assess how the value of cultural goods can be inferred from the distance people are prepared to travel, and at what cost to themselves, to see and experience these goods;
• Stated preference methods: contingent valuation and multi-attribute based stated choice experiments, which can be used to estimate both use values and also non-use (existence and bequest) values for cultural goods, as well as valuing the attributes of specific cultural goods, and assessing how market share might change if attributes (e.g. the composition and displays in museums) are varied.
These techniques were applied to value different aspects of archaeology, museums and galleries, film, and theatre.
The benefits of developing such techniques in the arts and humanities context are potentially very important - allowing the quantification of the economic value of the arts and humanities in both financial and in economic terms - as well as measuring public preferences for these cultural goods and changing market share as cultural goods are developed and enhanced.
The following papers, produced in collaboration with Naomi Kinghorn who occupied the Fellowship from October 2005 to February 2008, have been published or are ‘in press’:
Naomi Kinghorn and K.G. Willis (2007). Estimating visitor satisfaction for different art gallery layouts using a choice experiment. Museum Management and Curatorship 22 (1), 43-58.
Naomi Kinghorn and Ken Willis (2008). Valuing the components of an archaeological site: an application of a choice experiment to Vindolanda, Hadrian’s Wall. Journal of Cultural Heritage 9(2), 117-124.
Naomi Kinghorn and Ken Willis (2008). Measuring museum visitor preferences towards opportunities for developing social capital: an application of a choice experiment to the Discovery Museum.
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 14 (6): (in press).
K.G. Willis and Naomi Kinghorn (2008). Utility and visitor preferences for attributes of art galleries, in Luigi Fusco Girard and Peter Nijkamp (eds.) Cultural Tourism and Sustainable Local Development. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. (in press).
Other reports under the Fellowship Scheme include:
K.G. Willis (2006). Public Value from AHRC Funding of Art Exhibitions: the 2004 Raphael Exhibition at the National Gallery. Research Report to AHRC, Bristol.
K.G. Willis and Colin Wymer (2006). Public Value from AHRC Funding For Books under the AHRC Research Leave Scheme. Research Report to AHRC, Bristol.
The above work mainly concentrated on using stated preference methods, viz choice experiments to investigate visitors’ preferences for layout of art galleries, and content of archaeological sites, and museums. The evaluation of the economic value of the Raphael art exhibition at the National Gallery, and cultural books produced under the AHRC research leave scheme, both employed market data (sales) to estimate the total economic value of these AHRC grants.
Future research will concentrate on the value of the theatre. One survey at the National Arts Festival 2008, at Grahamstown, has already been completed; and analysis is underway to complete a paper by
K.G. Willis and J.D. Snowball (2008) Investigating how the attributes of live theatre productions influence consumption choices, using conjoint analysis: the example of the National Arts Festival, South Africa.
Further research on the theatre and public preferences for the arts is currently being undertaken by Dr José Grisolía.
Further details and project reports when published can be found on the web site of CREAM at the University of Newcastle.
Further details and project reports can be found on the web site of CREAM at the University of Newcastle.