Intangible Cultural Heritage as Creative Capital: Evaluating the Economic Contri-butions of Vietnamese Folk Performing Arts to Local Development

Vietnam has committed to raising the contribution of cultural industries to 7% of GDP by 2030, yet the mechanisms through which living folk performing arts generate value for the communities that hold them remain poorly understood. Drawing on cultural capital theory, the resource-based view and social exchange theory, this study examines whether intangible cultural heritage creative capital (ICHCC) embedded in Vietnamese folk performing arts contributes to local development (LD) through cultural entrepreneurship (CE) and economic benefits (EB). Survey data were collected from 217 practitioners, club members, cultural-tourism operators and local officials in communities that safeguard UNESCO-inscribed folk performing arts, and the model was estimated with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). ICHCC had a positive effect on cultural entrepreneurship (β = 0.481, p < .001) and on economic benefits (β = 0.324, p < .001). Cultural entrepreneurship increased economic benefits (β = 0.337, p < .001) and local development (β = 0.221, p < .001), while economic benefits were the strongest predictor of local development (β = 0.724, p < .001). The model explained 73.0% of the variance in local development. All four specific indirect effects of ICHCC were significant, including the serial path ICHCC → CE → EB → LD (β = 0.117, p < .001), and the total effect of ICHCC on local development reached 0.458. Roughly half of this effect travelled through economic benefits alone, with the remainder carried by entrepreneurial activity. The findings indicate that folk performing arts support local development when heritage is turned into income-generating activity by local entrepreneurs, rather than through recognition or preservation alone. The study adds a serial-mediation explanation to the heritage economics literature and offers provincial authorities evidence for prioritising entrepreneurial support when implementing the national strategy for cultural industries.