This paper proposes a novel approach to explore the relation between cultural participation and subjective well-being, and to dig into the relation between the individual and regional dimensions. Using the Italian Multipurpose survey, we derive major cultural consumer profiles that combine the variety and intensity of engagement through latent class analysis. We then investigate how heterogeneity in cultural profiles at the national and regional levels relates to overall life satisfaction and relevant domains (leisure and friendship relationships). The results indicate a positive relation with diversity in consumption becoming more significant in specific domains. At the same time, we find patterns of regional variation in the relation, which is only partly explained by indicators of cultural supply at the regional level. The findings shed light on the role of habits of cultural consumption in individual well-being and inform the policy debate on culture-led interventions.

This paper investigates the impact of the UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) inscription on income and property values in Italian municipalities with heritage sites inscribed during the past two decades. To address the selection bias and identify the causal impact of inscription, we focus on municipalities having sites included in the national ‘tentative list’ (i.e., a list of candidates for subsequent nomination) and exploit the plausibly exogenous timing of inscription conditional upon being on the list. The evidence from a heterogeneity-robust event study analysis suggests that WHL listing has a significant impact on income and property prices in urban areas. Possible underlying mechanisms are discussed.

This paper studies the impact of UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) inscription on income and property values in the Italian municipalities that had their sites inscribed during the past two decades. To address the selection bias and identify the causal impact of inscription, we focus on sites included in the national ‘tentative list’ (i.e., list of candidates for subsequent nomination) and exploit the plausibly exogenous timing of inscription conditional upon entering the list. The evidence from an event study analysis suggests that WHL listing has a significant impact on the level and distribution of income. Possible underlying mechanisms are discussed.

The debate on the digital transition of cultural heritage has often focused on the op-portunities , challenges faced by cultural institutions, but in recent years a growing at-tention has been devoted to understanding the role of grassroots and collaborative initia-tives in contributing to this process. In this article, we study the Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) contest in Italy, one of the largest and most widespread collaborative projects con-tributing in documenting cultural heritage through open access tools. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence collected from ten editions of the initiative, the paper investigates the contribution of collaborative digital communities in the production and sharing of knowledge about cultural heritage on the Internet. In particular, our findings point out to systematic differences in the rate of documenting monuments across regions , types of municipalities, as well as peculiar patterns of the WLM community in the modes of con-tribution and re-use of images in Wikimedia projects. The analysis adds insights into the opportunities and challenges that collaborative projects through open access and re-use of digital content can offer for the enhancement of cultural heritage.

Industrial heritage has in recent years become an important component in land use and urban development policies. Yet, assessing the economic value associated with the preservation and reuse of industrial complexes remains an open question. In this paper, we apply a discrete choice experiment (DCE) method to assess the economic valuation of the Baosteel steel factory, an industrial brownfield in Shanghai planned to be transformed into an arts and entertainment hub. By eliciting the preferences of locals for the preservation and reuse of distinct attributes of the site, our findings suggest that the preservation of significant landmarks and the intangible component of the industrial site are the two most relevant attributes worth protection. Moreover, we add evidence on the relationship between respondents' economic preferences and their attitude toward the cultural value conveyed by industrial heritage by showing how distinct groups of respondents express different preferences for single attributes of the industrial heritage. The paper contributes to the heritage valuation literature by illustrating the implications and challenges of assessing the demand for industrial heritage rehabilitation projects. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS on behalf of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )

From the ashes of the creative city paradigm, there is a growing awareness of the urban creative economy as an adaptive complex system of intertwined actors and institutions. Yet, especially in the European context, little attention has been given to understanding informal and alternative art spaces and venues that contribute to the vibrancy of the urban cultural scene. Drawing on the emerging creative and cultural ecology literature, the article proposes a conceptual and empirical framework to analyze alternative cultural production as an ecological community. After providing a conceptualization of distinct types of alternative cultural organizations, we investigate the economic, spatial, and relational structure of more than 50 art spaces in Turin, Italy, an industrial city that has experienced a radical urban transformation based on culture-led development strategies. Using both a quantitative and qualitative approach, our findings unveil a distinction between centers pursuing artistic specialization and those more oriented toward aggregating diversified cultural activities. The two types of organizations coexist within the community, but the difference in their mission and operation influences the organizational structure, the involvement in neighborhood revitalization, and features of the local network of collaborations. From a spatial perspective, while the centers tend to cluster in the main peripheral areas of social and urban transformation, the analysis points out possible different locational choices and spatial dynamics for the two types of organizations in distinct areas of commercial and real-estate-led transformation.

Digital transformation has deeply influenced how innovation can rise in the production, distribution and consumption of cultural products. Although data-driven innovation has been proved effective in creating value across many business functions, the pace of adoption of strong data ecosystems seems slower for Arts and Cultural Organizations (ACOs). The paper theoretically explores how data analytics can affect different areas of innovation in the core cultural sectors. By integrating marketing intelligence, arts management and policy literature with illustrative evidence from secondary sources, we discuss the potential impact of data analytics for enhancing ACOs innovation. First, digitalization and connectivity have increased opportunities for customer engagement and empowerment, shifting cultural consumption from a transaction to a relationship with cultural organizations. Second, data-driven metrics allow ACOs and policy makers to match more effectively patterns of consumption and eventually to create value from harvesting and processing information. Finally, although ACOs are encouraged to review their traditional business models through this new trajectory, significant conceptual and organizational barriers question the benefits of data analytics and slow down its adoption. The paper contributes to the academic and policy debate on the role of data-driven innovation in arts management and marketing strategies for cultural organizations.

The chapter explores the changes in the cultural events' organization by coworking spaces (CSs) in Italy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides the core business (renting desks), many CSs organize events, such as workshops, cultural, charity, and networking events. By promoting public events in their spaces, CSs make profits, enlarge their network, gain visibility, and strengthen the relationship with the neighbourhood. The restrictions imposed by the pandemic have forced the CSs to rethink their business strategies, coming up with new ways of communication and promotion of their activities, among which the organization of cultural events. Before the pandemic, websites and social media pages were the main communication tools; the lockdown has strengthened this tendency: after March 2020, some CSs promoted online events mainly addressed to their users. Data from the Italian Coworking Survey in 2018 and 2020, which concerns a representative sample of Italian CSs, and from the Milano Collabora project were analyzed. The concluding paragraph explores whether policy measures and financing aids have been put forward in the EU and discusses what might be more appropriate for facing the pandemic's complex consequences in the next future.

La recente crisi pandemica ha evidenziato come la digitalizzazione e la connettività delle collezioni siano essenziali per valorizzare il patrimonio culturale e facilitarne l’accesso. Se le aspettative sulle potenzialità dell’accessibilità digitale alle collezioni museali sono ampliamente condivise, manca tuttavia una comprensione approfondita di come le collezioni digitali dei musei vengono effettivamente fruite dai pubblici. Sul piano curatoriale e della comunicazione, i musei hanno infatti bisogno di studiare e comprendere meglio le comunità online e gli spazi digitali che le aggregano, non solo per produrre un output mirato alla costruzione di una relazione, ma anche per essere in grado di saper monitorare/ascoltare le risposte a tali iniziative. In questo contributo, attraverso i casi studio di due musei italiani (Museo Egizio di Torino e Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli), si offre un’analisi esplorativa delle dinamiche di produzione, fruizione e riuso di immagini di beni archeologici presenti su Wikimedia Commons. Il contesto Wikimedia è particolarmente interessante per la conduzione di analisi di questo tipo in quanto è usato a livello globale e mette a disposizione dati aperti e strumenti per analizzare i modi e i tempi di riutilizzo dei materiali fotografici nelle pagine Wikipedia. In questa prospettiva, i risultati ottenuti in questo studio vogliono stimolare il dibattito sulle potenzialità che tali strumenti e metriche offrono per comprendere le nuove forme di fruizione digitale e attivare politiche sempre più mirate a dialogare con i pubblici online.

Although cultural tourism has generated extensive literature, it has often overlooked proximity tourism practices and the determinants of visits to near-home cultural amenities, often located in rural destinations with lower market appeal. This article investigates visiting behaviors and characteristics of intra-regional flows from urban settings toward museums and heritage sites located in surrounding areas. We use a unique transactional data set of about 76,000 subscribers to a regional museum card in Piedmont (Italy) to analyze visiting patterns in the 2011–2014 period from the city of Turin to out-of-town cultural institutions. Our empirical analysis shows that being male, having lower socioeconomic status, visiting home-based museums, and loyalty to the card program are the most relevant factors explaining propensity to out-of-town visits. At the same time, a clear polarization of visits between a limited number of cultural attractors and the tail of minor heritage sites suggests that differences in museum characteristics can generate distinct motivations for visits to the two types of cultural institutions. From a policy perspective, although a definitive evaluation of the effect of the museum card on proximity tourism cannot be undertaken, findings suggest that bundle of minor attractions and major urban museums can generate indirect network advantages, foster cultivation of taste, and eventually stimulate both the demand for regional destinations and the development of original cultural programs.

Au cours des deux dernières décennies, le rôle du patrimoine dans le développement économique durable a été de plus en plus reconnu. Pourtant, il manque encore dans l'analyse économique appliquée au domaine culturel et patrimonial un cadre théorique global répondant aux défis multiformes que pose ce nouveau paradigme de développement. L'article examine de manière critique les notions de capital culturel, de district culturel et de bien commun culturel, introduites dans le domaine de l'économie de la culture pour aborder sous différents angles les défis analytiques et politiques des stratégies de développement axées sur le patrimoine. L'article affirme que les trois concepts pourraient représenter les éléments constitutifs d'un cadre théorique intégré de gestion et de conservation du patrimoine pour parvenir à un développement économique durable. Après avoir examiné les trois concepts individuellement, l'article met en évidence leurs relations et complémentarités.

The paper aims to explore the drivers of immigrants’ participation to cultural and leisure activities in host countries. First, we discuss how the main analytical approaches on cultural participation can be extended to incorporate factors specific to migrants’ characteristics and behaviour, namely cultural traits or proximity to the native population’s culture and the level of integration in the host society. Secondly, we estimate zero-inflated ordered probit models to investigate migrants’ propensity and frequency to engage in cultural and leisure activities using data of a special survey on Income and Living conditions (2011–2012) on foreign households in Italy. Italy represents an interesting case because it is a recent immigration country, making the analysis particularly suitable for studying the behaviour of first-generation immigrants. Our findings suggest that, after controlling for standard individual predictors, cultural participation is significantly and primary driven by the process of acculturation which take place during the staying in the host country. Conversely, we find only a partial or weak evidence of the effect of both personal cultural capital and of the heterogeneity in migrants’ cultural traits on variation in participation rates.

Although cultural tourism has generated extensive literature, it has often overlooked proximitytourism practices and the determinants of visits to near-home cultural amenities, often located inrural destinations with lower market appeal. This article investigates visiting behaviors and char-acteristics of intra-regional flows from urban settings toward museums and heritage sites located insurrounding areas. We use a unique transactional data set of about 76,000 subscribers to a regionalmuseum card in Piedmont (Italy) to analyze visiting patterns in the 2011–2014 period from the cityof Turin to out-of-town cultural institutions. Our empirical analysis shows that being male, havinglower socioeconomic status, visiting home-based museums, and loyalty to the card program arethe most relevant factors explaining propensity to out-of-town visits. At the same time, a clearpolarization of visits between a limited number of cultural attractors and the tail of minor heritagesites suggests that differences in museum characteristics can generate distinct motivations for visitsto the two types of cultural institutions. From a policy perspective, although a definitive evaluationof the effect of the museum card on proximity tourism cannot be undertaken, findings suggest thatbundle of minor attractions and major urban museums can generate indirect network advantages,foster cultivation of taste, and eventually stimulate both the demand for regional destinations andthe development of original cultural programs.

This paper uses panel data on over 200 regions of Europe during the years 2010–2015 to study the relationship between the quality of institutions and the capacity of local authorities and stakeholders to effectively protect and support cultural heritage, using new designations in the UNESCO World Heritage List as a proxy. Besides analyzing the spatial distribution of World Heritage sites across European regions, we test whether the location of a region matters for the chances of obtaining a new UNESCO designation by controlling for the stock of World Heritage in the surrounding regions, and whether low regional government quality is an obstacle to inclusion of sites into the List. While we can detect no significant spill-overs from the stock of World Heritage in surrounding regions, we find evidence that local government quality matters for the chances of a region gaining a UNESCO site designation.

We present a model where museum commitment to immigrant integration is conditioned by the possible negative reactions of native visitors and patrons. We then exploit the rich information provided by the 2015 Italian museum census to investigate the factors associated with a higher probability of museums developing promotion programmes targeting an immigrant audience, with a special focus on the size of immigrant communities and the importance of anti-immigrant sentiment in the local context. We proxy the latter with the municipal vote shares of parties with an anti-immigrant agenda in the 2013 national elections. Our evidence shows that the vote share of Lega Nord has a significantly negative and sizable estimated coefficient. Conversely, we find no positive association with the overall share of immigrants-only the size of specific minorities at the local level increases the likelihood that a museum engages immigrants. We control for a number of context variables and specific museum characteristics, some of which (age of establishment, type of collection) show a positive association with museum commitment to immigrant integration.

In the last two decades, there has been a growing recognition of the role that cultural attractions play in characterizing tourist destinations and in shaping tourist experience (McKercher, 2002; Richards, 2002). From an economic perspective, cultural tourism has been widely studied, as a particular case of cultural consumption (Di Lascio et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2007), for the impact that cultural assets and activities have on tourism flows and quality (Herrero-Prieto and GomezVega, 2017; Russo, 2002) as well as on local development processes in general (Girard and Nijkamp, 2009). Yet, despite the growth in cultural tourism scholarship, several research questions remain open and there are a number of underexplored topics or unresolved issues in the empirical strategies adopted to address the topic. As highlighted by recent contributions (Noonan and Rizzo, 2017; Richards, 2018), there is still a loose definition of “cultural tourist.” This suggests that a deeper understanding of cultural tourists’ motivations, attitudes, and behavior is needed to better define the preferences associated to this specific type of travelers. While the marketing and sociological perspectives tended to identify different typologies of cultural tourists based on the depth and purposefulness of their cultural motivation, the economic literature has only rarely addressed empirically how the diversity of motivations or habits shape tourists’ consumption of cultural goods and services at the destination (Alderighi and Lorenzini, 2012; Brida et al., 2017). The use of big and transactional data on tourism consumption patterns can be useful in this respect, and they also offer novel insights into the complementarity/substitutability of cultural experiences with other leisure activities at tourism destinations.

Cultural heritage sites generate multiple streams of value to stakeholder groups whose interests and objectives frequently diverge. Contention over the conservation and appropriation of the values generated by heritage sites—whether economic returns, contributions to social or political cohesion, or sacred or other personal values associated with sites—leads to governance failures with adverse consequences both for the sites and for the various constituencies involved. This matter is gaining increasing attention among heritage scholars and practitioners. The conservation and management of cultural heritage sites can be conceived as a collective action problem arising from the strategic interaction of multiple actors. In this paper, we propose that the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, in conjunction with McGinnis’ Network of Adjacent Action Situations (NAAS), can be applied to diagnose the drivers of conflict and management failures at cultural heritage sites. By illuminating the inter-related governance dilemmas arising at two UNESCO cultural World Heritage sites, Machu Picchu in Peru and Angkor in Cambodia, our analysis reveals how either contention over governance dilemmas or the evolution of site management strategy can be better understood by using the IAD-NAAS frame to explore stakeholder dynamics within governance-related action situations that have interdependent outcomes.

This paper proposes a novel approach to explore the relationship between cultural participation and subjective well-being. While most empirical research has considered such a connection using cultural and leisure activities individually or in additive terms, drawing from the sociological literature, we adopt cultural consumption profiles emerging from the variety and intensity of engagement in different cultural activities simultaneously. Using data from the 2012 Italian Multipurpose survey on households Aspects of daily life, we first derive categories of cultural consumers through Latent Class Analysis and investigate how heterogeneity in cultural profiles is associated with overall life satisfaction and relevant domains (health, leisure, friendship relations, job and economic conditions). The results of our empirical analysis indicate a positive relationship between cultural participation and overall life satisfaction. Still, a more complex picture arises when considering all the statistically significant differences in life and domain satisfaction across cultural consumption patterns. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of cultural consumption habits on individual well-being and have implications for culture-led welfare policies.

This chapter aims at providing an economic perspective to the challenges characterizing integrated conservation and management approaches to urban heritage. Drawing from the cultural economist's toolkit, this contribution introduces the notion of heritage commons to extend and critically re-examine two established notions that have been often used to frame the nexus between cultural heritage and local development at the urban level, namely that of cultural capital and cultural districts.