What is the value of world heritage status for a German national park? A choice experiment from Jasmund,1 year after inscription

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate about whether World Heritage (WH) status has a significant tourism value. However, Su and Lin and Wuepper and Patry argue that the better question is which sites benefit and suggest a general pattern. In both studies, it is argued that in addition to broad regional trends, more remote and less famous destinations benefit most. We test this statement with a choice experiment at a small, remote, national park in northeast Germany. We find a per-person increase in willingness to pay of €4.70 which translates into an overall value increase of €3.8 million annually. Additionally, 9% of the visitors report they only know of the park because of the media coverage of its WH inscription and 15% report to have been convinced about the park’s quality by its WH status.