Valuing the Benefits of Cleaning Lincoln Cathedral

This paper summarises a contingent valuation study of willingness to pay forcleaning Lincoln Cathedral. A randomsample of the inhabitants of the city of Lincoln and the surrounding area wasquestioned as to their willingness topay for a change in the frequency of a hypothetical cleaning cycle from 40years to 10 years. This change wasillustrated by photographs which showed the same aspects of the Cathedralhalf-way through the two cleaning cycles.Individuals were also asked questions regarding their attitudes towards airpollution in general and its impact on theCathedral in particular. It was found that household willingness to pay isbest predicted by disposable income anda variable indicating distance from the site. Estimates of mean willingnessto pay range from £ 15 to £ 23 perhousehold per annum for those living Lincolnshire. Aggregating these valuesover the number of households inLincolnshire suggests that the annual damage inflicted by air pollution on theappearance of the building so far assoiling is concerned is valued between £ 0.4 m and £ 0.6 m.Different solutions to the problem of starting point biaswere explored and are shown to yield similar estimates of willingness to pay.