The Double Public Good: A Conceptual Framework for ``Shared Experience'' Values Associated with Heritage Conservation

Abstract

This paper introduces the double public good model as a representation of the simultaneous externalities that complicate decision making in the cultural heritage sphere. Social welfare is modeled as depending on both public and private benefits of households' production of individual heritage experience, which in turn depends on the stock of historic assets (a public good) and access effort (a private good). The public benefit of private experience arises from ``shared experience'' that fosters cultural identity and social understandings. The model generates marginal efficiency conditions for the amount of physical preservation, amount of access, and intensity of access. The model highlights the need for dual-level policy making in order to avoid unbalanced heritage preservation efforts that have been of some concern in the literature.