Evaluating the Cultural Value of Heritage Buildings Based on Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

The value of heritage buildings is gradually being emphasized, yet the public's understanding of cultural value remains nebulous. This has resulted in heritage buildings not being adequately protected. In this context, there is an urgent need for the study of evaluating the cultural value of heritage buildings. In this study, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) combined with a questionnaire survey was used to evaluate the cultural value of heritage buildings, five experts were invited to set the weights of the evaluation indexes of four major categories and 14 subcategories, and 200 valid questionnaires were distributed and successfully collected. It was found that the artistic/aesthetic value of heritage buildings was evaluated the highest, followed by historic value, scientific/technical value the third, and local/place value the lowest. Among the demographic variables, gender, education, and occupation had no significant effect on the evaluation of cultural values, but the age factor showed significant differences. In addition, the public tended to prioritize the artistic/aesthetic value of heritage buildings, while experts gave more importance to their historic value. For these results, the researcher carried out reliability and validity tests, comprehensive analysis, and variance analysis. This study demonstrates that the combination of a questionnaire survey and AHP realizes the quantitative evaluation of the cultural value of immateriality and gets rid of the subjectivity of qualitative evaluation.