The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) commissioned Alma Economics to scope out potential methods for monetising the value of social cohesion promoted by culture and heritage assets such as museums, libraries and community centres. The work contributes to DCMS's Cultural and Heritage Capital (CHC) project, which aims to develop a formal approach to valuing the social value of cultural assets — benefits that are often missed by existing economic appraisal, leading to systematic undervaluing and underinvestment in the sector. 

The study began with a review of existing evidence on how social cohesion is defined, the mechanisms through which culture and heritage contribute to it, and existing approaches to its measurement and valuation. Building on this, the project developed a Theory of Change mapping pathways from investment in culture and heritage assets to social cohesion outcomes and wider impacts. The project then assessed six non-market valuation methodologies against a Red-Amber-Green framework, before piloting a new valuation survey in the context of local libraries to test different approaches in practice. 

The research found that social cohesion is a complex, multidimensional concept with no universally accepted definition, and that no single valuation method is suitable across all contexts — the appropriate approach depends on the outcomes being valued, the data available, and the objectives of the evaluation. 

Read the report here.