Abstract Public support of library services must be targeted towards children because these services play a key role in their development. However, no prior research has investigated the value of public library services for children. Specifically, earlier studies evaluated the value of public libraries as a whole, without considering library services for different stakeholders. The fact that children are not autonomous economic agents is another problem to address. These barriers can be overcome by using the contingent valuation method with parents/caregivers as the subjects queried and children used as the objects in this study. Thus, the economic value of library services for children can be obtained to support managerial decisions on services specifically designed for children. More precisely, this study is unique in that it develops a contingent valuation methodology for estimating the value of children's library services based on adults' willingness to allocate a proportion of municipal budgets. Both users and non-users were surveyed to verify the proposed methodology empirically. The results show that the perceived effectiveness (ratio between perceived benefits and costs) of children's library services is 11.2 (11.2 units of benefits for each unit invested) in Czech public libraries compared with 4.3 for a library as a whole. This finding confirms the essential role of children's library services, implying that public libraries should offer a broader selection of children's books and other services. The study also shows that the value of children's library services depends on the age, education and economic structure of the adults queried. In addition, their satisfaction with library services is another important determinant, indicating that public libraries can influence the perceived benefits of children's library services.

中文翻译：

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儿童图书馆服务的经济价值：捷克公共图书馆的案例

摘要 图书馆服务的公共支持必须针对儿童，因为这些服务在他们的发展中起着关键作用。然而，之前没有研究调查过公共图书馆服务对儿童的价值。具体而言，早期的研究评估了公共图书馆作为一个整体的价值，而没有考虑为不同利益相关者提供的图书馆服务。儿童不是自主的经济代理人这一事实是另一个需要解决的问题。这些障碍可以通过使用条件评估方法来克服，父母/照顾者作为本研究中的询问对象和儿童作为对象。因此，可以获得儿童图书馆服务的经济价值，以支持专门为儿童设计的服务的管理决策。更确切地说，本研究的独特之处在于，它开发了一种基于成人愿意分配一定比例的市政预算来估算儿童图书馆服务价值的条件估值方法。对用户和非用户都进行了调查，以凭经验验证所提出的方法。结果表明，捷克公共图书馆儿童图书馆服务的感知效率（感知收益与成本之比）为 11.2（每单位投资收益为 11.2 个单位），而图书馆整体为 4.3。这一发现证实了儿童图书馆服务的重要作用，意味着公共图书馆应该提供更广泛的儿童书籍和其他服务选择。研究还表明，儿童图书馆服务的价值取决于年龄，成年人的教育和经济结构。此外，他们对图书馆服务的满意度是另一个重要的决定因素，表明公共图书馆可以影响儿童图书馆服务的感知收益。