Cultural heritage participation in Italy: the role of human and social capital

Purpose This paper examines the relationship between human and social capital and participation and frequency of visits to museums, archaeological sites and monuments, controlling for any possible demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. It reviews the literature on the determinants of heritage participation to highlight the importance of educational attainment and the lack of work on social relations. Design/methodology/approach It uses the microdata of the “Multipurpose Survey on Households – Aspects of Daily Life”, available from the Italian Statistical Office for the years 2015–2020, to estimate ordered probit and zero-inflated ordered probit models. Findings The results show that Italians’ participation in cultural heritage activities and the frequency of such participation are primarily related to education level, followed by social interaction variables. However, when we interplay education level and social relations variables, the findings show that people with a high school qualification (diploma) who meet friends several times a week and are satisfied with relationships with friends display negative correlations with participation and frequency in cultural heritage activities. Other important determinants of the participation and frequency of cultural heritage activities are gender, student status, foreign citizenship and higher occupations. Originality/value To our knowledge, this is the first paper that studies the role of human and social capital in heritage cultural participation in Italy as well as the first study in literature on cultural participation that analyses the interplay between human capital and social relations.