Valuing the Mediterranean Diet from Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity to tangible resource of the te territory: a Contingent Valuation study

Abstract

This thesis engages with the problem of valuing the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of the Mediterranean Diet (MD), into the overall context of its progressive erosion due to general decline in adherence to the Mediterranean dietary pattern by Mediterranean people, especially young generations. This work is also engaged with the problem of what it may be done to preserve, safeguard and revitalize the ICH of the MD. In this context, with the double specific objective to calculate economic value of the Mediterranean Diet - Intangible Cultural Heritage and to define the specific determinants of respondents WTP for MD heritage and, consequently, for preserving it, a contingent valuation (CV) survey was conducted between July and October 2016, using nationwide internet-based interviews on a sample of 897 Italian respondents. To this scope, ICH of MD was declined in a prototypical project, which factoring the most affective elements of the intangible cultural heritage of the Mediterranean diet into a tangible product related with cultural as well as tourism sector: the “Mediterranean Diet District”. It was designed to let people, physically and actively, “experience” the ICH of the MD, making explicit and tangible its use value. The results of this study provide quantitative information and important insights for both policymaking and research.