Governmental Financial Reporting of Heritage Assets From a User Needs Perspective

The implementation of IPSASs in European Union countries and the harmonization of governmental financial reporting are intended to respond to the needs of citizens. An important characteristic of reforms to governmental accounting and financial reporting is the incorporation within the accounting systems of all public authority assets, which include the case of ‘heritage assets’. This paper investigates to what extent IPSAS 17 responds to user needs of governmental financial reporting about heritage assets by conducting a survey of mayors and councillors in the Italian local government.     

Exploring heritage tourism performance improvement for making sustainable development strategies using the hybrid-modified MADM model

Industrial heritage tourism has become increasingly popular in recent years. However, strategies for improving the industrial heritage tourism development-related performances are still an underdeveloped research topic academically. Therefore, this study’s purpose is to explore the feasibility performance-improving strategies using a hybrid-modified multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) based on the DEMATEL technique in constructing the influential network relation map (INRM) and in determining the influential weights of DANP. Then, the modified VIKOR method is combined with the influential weights of DANP, performance gaps were identified, and then the most effective strategies for improving tourism development-related performance at industrial heritage sites can be generated using INRM. Finally, an empirical real case study of a rehabilitated gold-mining site of Taiwan is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the hybrid-modified MADM model. According to the results, the decision-makers should highly prioritize improving high-priority criteria such as ‘social usefulness’, ‘resource integration’, ‘destination policy and development’, ‘economic development’, ‘cultural links’, ‘cultural learning’, and ‘natural landscape resources’ in advance to successfully achieving the aspired performance levels. Additionally, this study suggests meaningful industrial heritage tourism performance improvement strategies that have been rehabilitated throughout the world.     

昆曲艺术创意推广研究

作为首批被列入“人类口头与非物质遗产代表作”的昆曲，在21世纪初又一次焕发出青春活力，受到国内外各界广泛观注。如何保护和推广昆曲这份瑰丽的遗产并使之回归到大众的生活中，是非物质文化遗产保护的重大课题之一。以昆曲艺术的文化内涵和社会使命为出发点，探讨如何以提升人们的欣赏水平、审美趣味、生活品质为目标，通过传统与现代的融合来推广昆曲。     

Attitudes and willingness to donate towards heritage restoration: an exploratory study about Bulgarian socialist monuments

In this exploratory study, an attempt was made to clarify the role of the visitors' perception of the socialist era in relation to their (1) perception of socialist monuments' maintenance level, (2) willingness to visit socialist monuments, (3) willingness to present socialist monuments for tourism purposes, (4) willingness to pay towards a visit to a socialist-era monument, and (5) willingness to donate towards socialist-era sites' restoration. Based on a quantitative study with 236 Bulgarians at Buzludzha peak, the findings suggest that the perception of the socialist era is relevant to the understanding of the individual's willingness to visit socialist monuments, presenting them to international and local visitors, the evaluation of their maintenance level, and the willingness to support their restoration. The findings' theoretical and practical contributions are discussed, highlighting the importance of the individuals' perception of a heritage site when revealing their attitudes towards its restoration.     

Tourism-based heritage conservation in Murshidabad: an appraisal

The article appraises the outcome of promoting tourism as a strategy for heritage conservation in the case of Murshidabad, an archetypal historic town in decline in India. A relational maturity-based framework has been used to examine the complementarities and conflicts between tourism and heritage conservation in the town. The prevailing nature of tourism conservation relationship in Murshidabad upholds the criticality characteristically observed in developing countries, where governments focus primarily on the revenue generating potential of built-heritage centric tourism ignoring the conservation attention necessary to retain authenticity and meaningful existence of historic structures. The overarching issues emerging from the current level of relational maturity in Murshidabad are identified with suggestions for possible policy implications of the study.     

Transnationalizing industrial heritage valorizations in Germany and China – and addressing inherent dark sides

ABSTRACT

Industrial heritage valorizations are usually characterized by two pervasive trends: Firstly, there is an understandable, but extremely narrow, focus on national histories of industrialization, thus excluding what has always been a constitutive element of any industrialization path after the initial industrial revolution in England: transboundary flows of hardware, capital, knowledge, people or power. Secondly, there is an almost exclusive concentration on the individual achievements of entrepreneurs, engineers and architects in times of peace and industrial progress. Current industrial heritage valorizations only rarely adequately reflect the other side of industrialization phases or patterns, that is, their disquieting stories of war, occupation, other forms of imposed foreign influence, disasters, social unrest and the suffering of individuals or groups triggered by, or leading to, crises, failures, relocations and destruction. Taking these blind spots as its starting point, this paper explores more inclusive ways of representing industrial heritage. Based on the concept of geo-historically entangled processes of transnationalization and case studies from Germany and China, the authors argue that the industrial landscapes reflect both former and current transboundary industrialization processes representing two or more nations’ painful and dissonant, but common, heritage. This should be mirrored more appropriately and consistently in industrial heritage tourism approaches and interpretation strategies.     

Confronting sustainable development in two rural heritage valorization models

Many rural areas have reinvented their territorial development through tourism, turning to vernacular heritage to ensure their future. Various models of heritage preservation and valorization are adopted where small-scale agriculture is no longer viable. Among them, ecomuseums and place-based labelization schemes transform rural heritage into an economic resource while remaining grounded in cultural and architectural preservation and identity transmission to future generations. Both face criticisms, including being decried as fostering the museumification and mythification of the rural, effectively holding back rural areas in an imagined and romanticized past rather than providing a vision for a sustainable future. The Association of the Most Beautiful Villages of France and the Ecomusée d'Alsace illustrate the debate. This investigation analyzes how these two initiatives challenge critics. It unveils their respective understandings of the future of rurality and their approach to promoting sustainable communities through tourism. By highlighting responses to tensions between valorizing the past and forward development in the countryside, findings reveal paradigm shifts from traditional habitat preservation to future-oriented architectural pedagogy in one case, while operational exigencies and normative quality principles mitigate opportunities in the other.     

遗产责任:概念、特征与研究议题

为回应学术界关于旅游研究范式转型中提出的旅游研究应更关注的公平与权利、道德与责任问题,根据遗产旅游的现实发展需要,研究以国际宪章与法规关于遗产责任的表述为出发点,根据遗产与遗产旅游的本质属性特征,借鉴企业社会责任和负责任旅游的概念界定方式,提出"遗产责任"的学术概念,并根据遗产与遗产旅游的内涵对遗产责任的特征进行了讨论。在此基础上,根据遗产旅游研究的核心问题提出了遗产责任研究的"什么是遗产责任""谁的遗产责任""不同的遗产责任行动对遗产价值再现和遗产旅游可持续发展产生什么影响"3大核心研究议题。     

Ramshackle farmhouses,useless old stables,or irreplaceable cultural heritage? Local inhabitants’ perspectives on future uses of the Walser built heritage

Social and economic developments in rural regions call for a discussion of strategies of dealing with redundant traditional buildings. Using a social science approach, our study examines how the local population in two rural regions perceives the built heritage and which factors are underlying these perceptions. People’s attitudes towards maintaining the cultural heritage vary considerably and are partly influenced by the socio-cultural and economic context of the region. The present article discusses some of the core regional socio-cultural influences on attitudes towards the rural built heritage. Following from qualitative interviews, the article concludes that the scale of perception of the built heritage is related to the “liveliness” of the local culture: The more original and distinctive the local culture is, and the more the local economy is still based on agriculture, the wider the scale of perception of the traditional cultural landscape and built heritage. In a region with local traditions that are alive and followed in everyday life, and a local economy that is mainly based on agriculture, the entire settlement structure is perceived as cultural heritage. In such areas, alternative uses should be found for redundant buildings. In contrast, in regions where the culture is less visible and alive nowadays and where the local economy has changed, people tend to perceive single buildings as representing their cultural heritage, and they often wish to preserve and conserve such remaining houses, barns and stables. In the study, we show that from a social science point of view, there is no universal perception of the maintenance of built cultural heritage. Rather, we see different views and opinions that are important to consider when it comes to developing heritage protection strategies together with public authorities.