The World Heritage list: Which sites promote the brand? A big data spatial econometrics approach

UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention encourages inscribed sites to promote the World Heritage brand by clearly communicating their affiliation. Based on the feedback from over 319,000 visitors at 791 locations, we create an index that shows the extent to which World Heritage sites are actually branding themselves as such. We find great heterogeneity throughout the list and explain this econometrically with site-specific incentives. Notably, the sites that benefit more from the World Heritage brand are significantly more willing to contribute to the collective brand than sites that benefit less. Specifically, rural sites are much better branded than urban sites, as rural sites benefit more from the brand than urban sites. We also find a positive relationship between World Heritage branding and its conservation status and a U-shaped relationship between a site’s visitor numbers and its branding. Furthermore, Asian sites are much better branded than sites in the Middle East, and richer countries and those with already more international tourists are branded less. The difficulty of effective branding, e.g., for large, open-access sites, has no significant effect. Our findings suggest that mandatory World Heritage branding obligations would have a positive effect on the World Heritage brand equity, bringing conservation and economic benefits to a much wider range of World Heritage sites.