The Economic Sustainability of Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Platform Age With Global Evidence and Implications for Xinjiang

ABSTRACT Digital platforms lower market access costs for intangible cultural heritage but can concentrate visibility, weaken community control, and disconnect revenue from cultural reproduction. This global survey integrates platform and cultural economics with research on authenticity, intellectual property, and heritage governance. Its Platform Frictions, Cultural Rents, and Intergenerational Reproduction framework distinguishes living practices from their commercial products, recordings, and experiences. Economic sustainability requires four minimum conditions that cannot substitute for one another. These comprise adequate net market access, viable cultural reproduction, a sufficient practitioner value share, and meaningful community control. The framework distinguishes these conditions from the mechanisms through which platforms affect them. Rankings, provenance labels, copyright, and certification can improve discovery and bargaining while concentrating demand, excluding legitimate variants, or burdening small producers. Community authorization requires representation, reviewable delegation, and effective appeal. Distributional assessment separates individual earnings, collective transfers, unpaid contributions, and investment in transmission. Applications to Xinjiang differentiate crafts, performances, foodways, and community events by economic object and institutional responsibility. Longitudinal indicators of apprentice retention, repertoire in use, and contextual participation distinguish authorized adaptation from commercial hollowing. Platform growth sustains living heritage when returns support practitioners, learning, and community authority.