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Our travel cost model of the actual trips to the sites pegs the coefficient on price at
-0.1263. This implies that for the average visitor it would take an increase in price of
3000 AMD to see a decrease of one in the annual number of trips to the site. The surplus
(what the average person is willing to pay, above and beyond what he spends to visit the
site) at the current conditions is almost 22,000 AMD for Garni, 19,000 AMD for
Haghardzin and Khor Virap and 13,850 AMD for Tatev.
Actual trips alone do not allow us to estimate the value of conservation works and
other initiatives that would enhance the cultural experience of the visitor or make his trip
more comfortable, as these programs do not currently exist. To circumvent this problem,
we pool the actual trips with intended trips under hypothetical scenarios to estimate the
value of public conservation and enhancement programs. In estimating our Poisson
model (amended for the on-site nature of our sample), we restrict the coefficient on the
price per trip to be equal to the value estimated from the Poisson model of actual trips.
This is a somewhat novel approach that brings together the “discipline of the market
forces” with the flexibility of questions about hypothetical circumstances.
We find that, all else the same, people equally value the scenario with improved
tourist service and the scenario that enhances the cultural experience, and that these are
valued a little more than the infrastructure-enhancing scenario. For example, within our
sample the welfare change associated with implementation of the culture-enhancing
scenario at Garni is 8,871 AMD. It is 6,458 AMD for the infrastructure-enhancing
program, and 10,346 for the service-oriented program. These figures are equivalent to
about 17, 12, and 20 US dollars, respectively, and are expressed on a per-year basis.