So far public value was primarily discussed from producer’s view. Public value was defined by the perception of decision makers (politicians or managers) – they decide what is valuable for society (i.e. public investments in health, security or education). The future analysis of public value should focus more on the perspective of the society itself as these are the stakeholders that use and benefit from the services. As keywords like citizen engagement gain importance the needs of citizens have to be considered to “engage” them. The question remains, about the relevant stakeholders for public organisations. We presume, that there is not one public value for the society but that public value has to be defined for each public organisation, depending on the service it creates for society and its stakeholders. Public Value focusses not only on maximising output on the short run, but on value creation on the long run with regard to any outcome (Benington 2011).
The discussion about the value cultural amenities bring to communities is not a new one. Already in the 1980s Clark and Kahn (1988) evaluated that cultural institutions (in their analysis museums, zoos, symphonies, dance and theatres) add benefit and have a positive economic impact on communities. Scott (2006) stated that “the role of museums and their place within society is no longer one which we can take for granted”. That cultural institutions create any value is uncontroversial: “the evidence is that museums, galleries and archives can do more than this, and act as agents of social change in the community, improving the quality of people’s lives through their outreach activities.[…] The aim of the policy is to encourage museums, galleries and archives to adopt a strategic approach to social inclusion.” (Department for Culture, Media and Sport 2000: 3).
The discussion of museums creating value is embedded into the debate about the general value of culture (Srakar/Copic 2012). It can be distinguished between the use and the non-use values of culture (Srakar/Copic 2012; Frey/Pommerehne 1989). You do not need to visit a world cultural heritage in order to attribute value to it (Srakar/Copic 2012). Yocco et al. (2009: 156) found that “there were no statistically significant differences on any of the public value categories between those who had or had not visited Columbia Museum of Art […]”.
Nonetheless museums and other cultural institutions have to justify the funding they receive unless it is not from private resources.
To evaluate if citizens see a benefit in museums and value museums we conducted an explorative study within Austria. Therefore we developed within an iterative process a questionnaire. Our aim is to analyse the interests of the citizens as main stakeholders of the services of the public sector. Therefore we created a questionnaire that enquired the interests of the citizens. What is valuable for the citizens as part of the society.
