Is cultural heritage really important for tourists? A contingent rating study

Abstract

In this paper we present the results of a contingent rating study carried out on a sample of tourisits visiting Scicli, a Sicilian town known for its baroque heritage. In particular, we focus on different attributes of tourism products –namely, season, accommodation and cultural heritage– to study how much each of these attributes weights in tourists’ preferences. We also study how the socio-demographic characteristics of people affect their evaluation of the different attributes of tourism products. The heritage endowment appears to be far from being the most important factor; this result is consistent across different socio-demographic sub-groups of interviewed persons.