In the age of neoliberalism, it has become common for the private sector to play an increasingly important role in various areas, including heritage conservation. It is believed that most governments nowadays have insufficient financial capacity and shortage in the human resources aspect, which has made intervention of the private sector in heritage conservation- related issues inevitable and warrants close scrutiny. Therefore, this study extends beyond the scope of explaining the potential benefits and barriers of private sector intervention in built heritage and aims to explore and answer questions associated with why public intervention is usually required in the area of arts and built heritage and what types of intervention and subsidy exist. With the intention of addressing these questions, this research follows a theoretically- based approach by investigating numerous texts from cross-cutting disciplines. The results of this research indicate that although the role of the private sector in heritage conservation cannot be overlooked, the role of the public sector continues to hold fundamental importance because some of the values and qualities attributed to heritage properties cannot be easily recognised in the marketplace.