Estimating the Marginal Utility of Different Sections of an Arts Festival: the Case of Visitors to the South African National Arts Festival.

This paper applies choice experiments (CE) to value the utility visitors derive from various sections of the National Arts Festival held once a year in Grahamstown, South Africa. A brief survey of the method and its use to date in valuing cultural goods is provided. The CE conducted at the 2003 South African National Arts Festival is described. The results show that a conditional logit model performs very well in valuing Festival attributes and provides interesting insights into the value that different gender and ethnic groups place on the various elements of the Festival. Such detailed information can help organizers to allocate resources more efficiently; particularly in South Africa, where the emphasis is on attracting previously excluded sectors of the population to cultural events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]