Culture based rural development in Romania: To what extent does cultural heritage contribute to socio-economic wellbeing in Romanian rural regions?

Culture is gaining increasing attention for its potential to influence regional development discourse at academic and institutional levels. In particular, the significance of cultural heritage - tangible and intangible - in the socio-economic impact mechanism provides scope for considering heritage resources as a tool for revitalizing rural communities. Rural environments are often regarded as particularly favourable settings for preserving both tangible and intangible heritage assets. Hence a heritage-led strategy approach can potentially allow for a sustainable and organic alternative to local development, so as to compensate for the structural changes in rural socio-economic landscapes emerging from the general global transition to a technologydriven economy. In fact, stemming from a Weberian (1904) perspective, several academic findings already point towards the potential for cultural heritage to facilitate rural economic development through cultural tourism and traditional arts and crafts commerce. Similarly, cultural heritage is being discussed with regards to community social wellbeing in its capacity to shape the local human capital, influence migration trends and enforce local identities. Following this academic trajectory, this research looks into the potential for cultural heritage to shape socioeconomic rural trajectories in Romania. More specifically, the study assesses the relations between cultural heritage and migration trends, the concentration of skilled human capital and the overall economic performance of 27 predominantly rural regions in Romanian for the year 2015. The empirical analysis was conducted through a three stage least squares regression model and confirms the potential for cultural heritage to influence socio-economic development within the Romanian context. First, the presence of arts and crafts workers was found to contribute to a decrease in out-flow migration rates. Second, the local presence of tangible and intangible heritage was confirmed to encourage larger concentrations of skilled employment. Third, heritage-related cultural participation was found to be positively related to the local GDP. Nonetheless, the empirical analysis led to relatively low correlation coefficients between the cultural and the socio-economic dimensions, pointing at the existence of various barriers to heritage-led rural development in Romania. The study hopes to address gaps in empirical research on the socio-economic implications of cultural heritage applied to the Romanian context and to provide useful insights for future examinations in this direction.