Explaining determinants of national UNESCO Tentative Lists: an empirical study

Abstract

The analysis empirically tests the determinants of the demand for acknowledgement in the Tentative List, an inventory of properties that States Parties intend to consider for the nomination in the World Heritage List (WHL). We find evidence that there are some sociopolitical and institutional variables that influence in a significant way the choice of states in requiring the admission of their properties in Tentative List. Namely, these variables represent the cultural relevance of a country and its role inside UNESCO, this last result being consistent with the findings of other previous analyses (Bertacchini and Saccone, 2012; Frey et al., 2013). Our conclusions unveil the possible reasons behind WHL imbalance, which date back to the submissions of Tentative Lists, the first act of national initiative.

Keywords:

• UNESCO
• World Heritage
• Tentative List
• global cultural goods

JEL Classification:

• Z11
• H87
• H41
• C21

Notes

¹ Defined by the Operational Guidelines of the UNESCO Convention.

² As the dependent variable displays a certain number of zero observations, zero-inflated negative binomial regression was also performed on our models. Vuong statistic of a test between a zero-inflated negative binomial and a negative binomial model, available upon request, indicates that this latter is preferred.

³ This problem could derive from the scale of the control variables. Reducing this scale, we obtained in any case a value different from 1, but still very small.