Unravelling Ostrom’s Design Principles Underpinning Sustainable Heritage Projects

Heritage conservation projects involve diverse stakeholders, such as property owners, communities, NGOs, and governments, whose “misaligned” incentives produce high transaction costs and often pose persistent challenges. Considering heritage sites as analogous to common pool resources (CPR), this study examines whether sustainable heritage projects adhere to Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for managing CPRs. The UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation are used as a benchmark to identify best practices in private–public collaborations over the past two decades. Through content analysis of award application dossiers, the researchers assess whether the design principles are applied differently between successful and unsuccessful projects and evaluate the sufficiency of Ostrom’s principles in the heritage conservation context. The findings indicate that four design principles are more consistently balanced in award-winning projects: “Collective Choice Arrangements”, “Congruence with Local Conditions”, “Monitoring Mechanisms”, and “Minimum Recognition of Rights”. Additionally, successful projects tend to incorporate “people growth-oriented activities”, such as skills training and education for local workers and youth, benefiting current and future project beneficiaries. These insights suggest that adapting Ostrom’s design principles can enhance the sustainability of heritage conservation efforts by better aligning stakeholder incentives and addressing the “misalignment of incentives” challenge commonly encountered in such projects.