Keeping heritage relevant at a generational crossroad: designing a choice experiment across local and global dimensions at a National Trust site

Heritage is at a generational crossroad, caught between preservation and reinvention, between the weight of history and the demands of an interconnected present. Heritage valuation has relied on straightforward measures, such as admission fees, visitor numbers, overlooking the broader cultural meanings that shape engagement across generations. This paper presents a stated preference survey enabling heritage research to deploy choice modelling in a novel way to capture both local and global dimensions of heritage. Focusing on Mount Stewart, a National Trust property in Northern Ireland, we move beyond conventional attributes to test different strategies such as rotating exhibitions, conservation workshops, and planting schemes that link the site to international and local narratives. The design incorporates perspectives from visitors and non-visitors, engaging new generations while highlighting the historical features valued by existing visitors and the local community. We demonstrate the feasibility and value of this design through an initial data collection and analysis, highlighting meaningful and statistically robust results. This paper introduces and demonstrates a novel experimental design for capturing local and global dimensions of heritage value. Going beyond the present case study, the approach provides heritage professionals and researchers with transferable knowledge to embed cultural depth and inclusivity into future studies.