More is worse: Decreasing marginal quality of the Unesco World Heritage list

Martina Dattilo, Fabio Padovano and Yvon Rocaboy
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Martina Dattilo: CREM-CNRS, University of Rennes 1

Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS from Condorcet Center for political Economy

Abstract: This paper empirically analyzes the evolution of the quality of sites included in the UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) from 1972 till 2016, testing the hypothesis that as the number of sites of a country in the WHL increases, their marginal quality decreases. The quality of a site is proxied by the number of criteria set by UNESCO that the site has been recognize to satisfy. Data lend support to this hypothesis, suggesting that, since the stock of cultural capital is fixed over time, countries propose sites of decreasing quality. The efficiency of a country’s bureaucracy appears to play a role in the inclusion of a site into the list. These results are robust to variations in the nature of the sites (cultural or natural), to tests of the stability of the UNESCO evaluation criteria and to changes of the econometric estimators. The analysis questions the credibility of the UNESCO WHL as well as UNESCO policies aimed at having more balanced geographical distribution of sites.

Keywords: UNESCO World Heritage List; international organizations; measurement of quality; efficiency of public administration; cultural capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F53 H87 L15 O19 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul
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