The Demarcated Douro Region is one of the oldest demarcated wine regions, and the largest and the most heterogeneous mountainous wine region in the world. Viticulture covers 44,000 ha, and since 2001 an area covering 24,600 ha has been designated as the most representative territory of the Demarcated Douro Region, the Alto Douro Wine Region. This region is included in the list of World Heritage Sites as an evolving and living cultural landscape. The Demarcated Douro Region fits the terroir model, as its economy is based on wine (Porto wine and Douro still wines), supplemented by tourism. During recent decades, both activities have witnessed deep and structural changes, with consequences for the maintenance of the traditional characteristics of the cultural landscape that drove the UNESCO classification. With this issue in mind, the goal of this paper is to describe the recent evolution of the main economic activities of the Demarcated Douro Region. In particular, we aim to deepen the knowledge about the preferences of Portuguese visitors towards the Alto Douro Wine Region and its attributes, thus determining those that deserve preservation and, consequently, public attention. The results of a mixed logit model show that visitors assign highest utility to the preservation of vineyards supported by schist walls, followed by the agglomerations and the characteristic mosaic nature of the landscape. Additionally, respondents who are richer, employed, better educated, better informed regarding the culture of the site and more influenced by the listing are more willing to participate in preserving the cultural heritage of the region.

The emergence of the Demarcated Douro Region (DDR), located in the northeast of Portugal, dates from 1756, when it was recognized as one of the first demarcated wine regions of the world. The viticulture covers 44,000 ha, almost 18% of the total area of the region and, since 2001, 24,600 ha (almost 10% of the total DDR area ¹ ), the Alto Douro Wine Region (ADWR) is included in the list of World Heritage Sites as an evolving and living cultural landscape, based on the following criteria: Criterion (iii) – The Alto Douro Region has been producing wine for nearly two thousand years and its landscape has been moulded by human activities ; Criterion (iv) – The components of the Alto Douro landscape are representative of the full range of activities associated with winemaking – terraces , quintas (wine - producing farm complexes) , villages , chapels , and roads ; Criterion (v) – T he cultural landscape of the Alto Douro is an outstanding example of a traditional European wine - producing region , reflecting the evolution of this human activity over time ( UNESCO, 2001 ).

These criteria point to the centrality of the wine economy on the configuration of the landscape and on the traces that defined the way its population occupied the territory, villages (agglomerations), accessibility and religion. Additionally a historical value accrues from the coexistence of different vineyard plantation techniques, ranging from the older forms or socalcos supported by schist walls to the more modern forms: patamares, vertical planting and vineyards with no land organization.

In the oldest vineyards, mechanization is difficult and complex, and the manpower requirement is high, leading to higher production costs and to a consequent increase in the market price of the wines produced. To overcome these weaknesses, a significant structural change of the vineyards planting techniques was implemented over recent decades. From 2001 to 2012, the total area occupied by vineyards with traditional techniques ( socalcos with schist walls) decreased from 4871 ha to 3476 ha, with more modern agricultural techniques being used instead. Additionally, the structural change indicates a tendency for monoculture of vines: the area of monoculture vineyards grew by 1282 ha at the expense of other uses of the land (namely Mediterranean cultures and traditional woods). These other uses create the characteristic mosaic of the ADWR, which is defined by the multiplicity of crops surrounding the vineyard plots and which is identified in preferences studies as one of the more appreciated attributes (e.g. Madureira et al., 2005 ).

The wine filière and the cultural landscape connected with it, in addition to the wine itself are important inputs for tourism (cultural tourism and oenotourism). Consequently, it is necessary to balance the competitiveness of the DDR׳s wine industry in an increasing globalized market with the preservation of the cultural attributes of the landscape and with visitors׳ preferences, bearing in mind that the preservation of landscapes “depends on national policy decisions which in turn will be shaped by the preferences of the general public” ( Howley et al., 2012 : 66).

Non-market valuation methods, in general, and stated preference techniques, in particular, provide a consistent way to understand preferences and to measure the benefits provided by cultural heritage goods, some of which are external to the marketplace. Their ability to capture both use and non-use values means that stated preference methods are the most suitable for the valuation of the majority of cultural heritage goods, which provide utility for direct users and for non-users in the form of existence value, option value and bequest value. In this category the technique that has been most commonly applied for capturing the value of cultural goods has been the contingent valuation method (e.g. Kaminski et al., 2007 ; Navrud and Ready, 2002 ; Noonan, 2003 ; Tuan and Navrud, 2007 ), which elicits the maximum willingness to pay (minimum acceptable payment) to ensure (to forgo) a hypothetical change in the availability of a non-market amenity. Nevertheless, when the valuation process is related to multi-attribute resources ( Mazzanti, 2003 ) or considers goods that individuals have no experience in valuing (inexistent or absent from the marketplace), the discrete choice experiments technique (DCE) is more adequate than the contingent valuation method.

As a stated preference method, DCE builds hypothetical markets through repeated discrete choice questions that encompass trade-offs between the relevant attributes and, in addition to the total economic value of a good or resource, is able to determine a ranking of the attributes describing the proposed change ( Bateman et al., 2002 ). Applications of DCE in the cultural arena have been much more limited than in the environmental economics field ( Choi et al., 2010 ) and have focused on monuments or groups of monuments ( Morey et al., 2002 ), sites ( Alberini et al., 2003 , Lourenço-Gomes et al., 2013 , Lourenço-Gomes et al., 2014 , Rolfe and Windle, 2003 and Tuan and Navrud, 2007 ) and cultural institutions ( Apostolakis and Jaffry, 2005 , Choi et al., 2010 , Choi, 2011 , Jaffry and Apostolokis, 2011 , Maddison and Foster, 2003 , Mazzanti, 2003 , Snowball and Willis, 2006 and Willis and Snowball, 2009 ).

In this paper, the DCE method is applied to enhance knowledge about the determinants of participating in a preservation program to safeguard the more traditional attributes of the ADWR and to understand the relative value that Portuguese visitors attach to each attribute. This issue needs to be seen alongside the recent evolution of the main economic activities of the DDR, namely the wine filière and tourism. To achieve these goals, the remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an economic overview of the DDR׳s wine filière and tourism. Section 3 presents the DCE application (theoretical framework and survey, data and results). Section 4 concludes the study with a discussion of managerial policy implications.

The main economic activities of the DDR are related to wine and tourism ( Andresen and Rebelo, 2013 ), and both activities have witnessed deep and structural changes during the past three decades that have a determining effect on the safeguarding of the attributes of the ADWR and its continuity in the cultural landscape.

DDR is a typical terroir model ² , and fits the organized cluster model, as is known to be the case for other European wine regions ( Rebelo and Caldas, 2013 ). According to the Centre for the Research, Study and Advancement of Mountain Viticulture, the DDR is the largest and most heterogeneous mountainous wine region in the world, characterized by valleys that cut deeply through steep high slopes along the river Douro and its tributaries, with predominantly shale rock; it experiences cold winters, hot summers and low rainfall. Here there are hillside vineyards, and more than 40% of the vines are planted in plots with a gradient greater than 40%, which hampers mechanization and requires manual labour; consequently, there are high production costs. The DDR has low-density population ( Andresen and Rebelo, 2013 ), with 236,786 inhabitants in 2011, of whom 22.7% were over 65 years old. From 2001 to 2011, the region has lost 7.9% of its population.