14 th International Conference of the Association for Cultural Economics International ACEI, Vienna, 6-9 July 2006 USING STATED PREFERENCES TO DETERMINE THE VALUE OF THE CULTURAL HERITAGE FOR VALUATION OF HISTORICAL SITES IN THE CITY OF VALDIVIA (CHILE) † Andrea BÁEZ MONTENEGRO ‡ Instituto de Estadística. Universidad Austral de Chile Email: abaez@uach.cl Mario NIKLITSCHEK HUAQUIN Instituto de Manejo Forestal. Universidad Austral de Chile Email: mniklits@uach.cl Luis César HERRERO PRIETO Departamento de Economía Aplicada. Universidad de Valladolid Email: herrero@emp.uva.es Abstract The economic valuation of the cultural heritage is an area of increasing interest and an important research topic for the emerging field of cultural economics. Many services and values associated with the cultural heritage are not traded in markets and their estimation requires methods developed for the valuation of non-market goods, particularly in environmental economics. In this paper, we apply the contingent valuation method with double dichotomous choice to valuate historical sites in the city of Valdivia, Chile. The valuation exercise was implemented by designing a hypothetical guided walking-tour to a cluster of historical sites in the city downtown area, of the city, and doing survey to tourists visiting the city during the summer of 2004. Parametric and non- parametric statistical methods were used to estimate the survival distribution and the mean and median estimates of the Willingness to Pay (WTP). We emphasized the importance of explicitly treating heterogeneous preferences and the differences among methods to estimate the survival distribution. Keywords: Cultural economics, historical heritage, stated preference, parametric and nonparametric estimations. † The financial resources to undertake the fieldwork were provided by the Research Council of la Universidad Austral de Chile. Project S23-2003 ‡ Scholarship of AECI