Assessing the Economic Value of Cultural Heritage Site: A Case of the Kekayon Puppet Museum in Yogyakarta

Abstract

Some museums in Indonesia uphold the same mission, namely in the efforts to preserve culture in Indonesia. As part of a cultural preservation, the Kekayon Puppet Museum Yogyakarta educate visitors about Javanese culture through puppet. This study estimates the economic value of a cultural heritage site by investigating visitors’ willingness to pay (WTP) for preserving the cultural heritage by visiting the museum. Using a logistic regression, we tested the determinants of visitors’ WTP. The results indicate that the visitors contribute less by entrance fee payment. The average WTP value were IDR12,000 (USD 0.83). There are 81.39 percent of respondents willing to contribute. This indicates that most of the visitors had a low contribution for the Museum. This study contributes to the museum administrators, especially cultural heritage museums by identifying the value of visitor’s WTP and the determinants of WTP for visiting the museum, so they can promote the importance of cultural heritage tourism and improve the facilities of the museum.