A Finance Model for the Built Cultural Heritage - Proposals for improvements of future Heritage Economics

Abstract: Abstract The new role of built cultural heritage, as an economic asset for development strategies and the widened definition of built heritage as a concept-, explains today’s affluence of sites. These can only be guaranteed with sufficient heritage funding. Financers’ inducement to fund cultural heritage depends on that heritage’s current value estimation and only highly revered sites qualify for support. Case studies imply that values are incessantly present in heritage and so these can be re-established when the right external conditions, or actions, arise. The assessment i.e. reflects the human perception of values projected onto buildings and not the physical characteristics of the heritage itself. This is way it is possible to modify finance incentive conditions. Finance models are needed but prototypes of such finance models are lacking. This inquiry aspires to supplement the findings of Cultural Economics, but from the viewpoint of actual building conservation practice. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to investigate the prospects of securing the successful future of built heritage by proposing a value stabilizing finance model, based on; the acquiring, the economizing and the assuring of heritage funding. The strategy of this inquiry involves five steps. Accelerators proved to determine all aspects of the heritage finance model, since these accelerators stabilize the values of built heritage sites by revealing the payback capacity of financial commitments to that heritage. Heritage funding in Sweden has stagnated due to weak emotional and financial accelerators, which means built heritage is at risk of falling into decay. The suggested contribution of this inquiry is the exploratory analysis of the mechanisms behind heritage funding including its accelerators, hence introducing new terminology into building conservation instigated by the idiom of economics, which could ease future strategic planning of heritage funding.