Designing adaptive reuse strategies for cultural heritage with choice experiments

The introduction of the sustainable development concept in the field of cultural heritage preservation has led relevant changes to traditional interventions on historical buildings and areas. Although the idea of reusing cultural heritage is not new, the emerging concept of adaptive reuse stresses even more the importance of a holistic approach for addressing successful interventions. Selecting among the potential uses the one that could ensure the preservation of physical characters as well as intangible values, fueling economic development, is a challenging policy and design issue. In this context, this paper proposes the use of Choice Experiments to support the design of adaptive reuse strategies for three mostly unused castles in Northern Italy characterized by different states of conservation, accessibility and surrounding territorial context.