Measuring Cultural Heritage Awareness: A Sustainable and Ethical Framework for Heritage Governance

This study develops and validates the Cultural Heritage Awareness Scale (CHAS), a multidimensional measurement instrument designed to assess individuals’ awareness of cultural heritage within the context of sustainable heritage management. The study addresses the need to move beyond cognitively oriented awareness models by conceptualising cultural heritage awareness as an integrated construct encompassing ethical responsibility, functional engagement, and governance-oriented conservation. The scale was developed using a quantitative scale development design, informed by expert-generated items and psychometric validation procedures applied to university student samples. Factor analyses confirmed a stable three-dimensional structure with satisfactory model fit and strong internal consistency, indicating that the proposed model reliably captures distinct yet interrelated dimensions of heritage awareness. The findings demonstrate that cultural heritage awareness extends beyond recognition and appreciation to include ethical accountability, engagement with use, and participation in governance-related processes. By integrating ethical, functional, and governance dimensions within a single validated instrument, the CHAS offers an original contribution to heritage awareness measurement. The scale provides a practical tool for assessing heritage awareness in educational, planning, and policy-related contexts, particularly in relation to participatory and sustainability-oriented heritage governance. While the scale shows robust performance within a university-based sample, further research is recommended to examine its applicability across more diverse socio-cultural contexts.