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Factors affecting users’ assessment of the economic value of university library services

Assessing the economic value of academic libraries has emerged as a new approach to the evaluation of library services. Using contingent valuation methods, we collected willingness to pay amounts for five different library services from users at four universities in Korea. Based on past research and the results from a preliminary survey at two institutions, we formulated five hypotheses that tested the efficacy of the factors predicting variations in willingness to pay values. The results indicate that university characteristics such as the type of institutions (public vs. private) and core mission (research vs. instruction) did not seem to affect differences in the service value assessments. The presence of payment cards in the data collection also did not seem to give variability in willingness to pay values. The only factor that seemed to affect these values turned out to be users’ status: faculty members consistently assigned higher amounts than students. For economic valuation methods to be fully appreciated, we need reliable data collection methodologies and more systematic approaches to the factors affecting value assessments. This study is still in its infancy due to the small scope of participating institutions and users; however, this is just a first step towards the proper economic evaluation of library services.