The application of digital technologies plays a crucial role in offering solutions to enhance the economic potential of the cultural sector, through new modalities for distribution and reception of cultural experiences. The question of whether and how ICT adds value to collections, museums, and cultural sites and promotes access and communication with users/visitors is an open one. This chapter aims to provide empirical evidence on the effects of technological innovations in the economic performance of cultural institutions. To this end, the authors use data of Italy's statistical office covering the universe of Italian cultural organizations in the year 2018. The findings suggest that new digital technologies play a role in enhancing the value and relevance of cultural heritage and its influences over the socio-economic context.
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There is a general consensus that “cultural heritage” is a resource that can trigger economic, social and environmental benefits to society. Cultural heritage is a key contributor to the attractiveness of cities, towns and rural areas in terms of private sector inward investment, developing cultural creative quarters and attracting talents. It represents a crucial source of creativity and innovation, generating new ideas and creating innovative services — ranging from digitization of cultural assets to exploiting the virtual reality technologies — with the aim of interpreting historic environments and buildings and making them accessible to citizens and visitors.
In this paper, culture heritage is conceived in a broad sense as “cultural activities” (including museum institutions, galleries, archaeological sites, monumental complexes). They foster growth and employment, contribute to innovation, entrepreneurship and skills development, support urban and rural regeneration, stimulate exports, maintain cultural identity, and enhance cultural diversity.
The application of digital technologies plays a crucial role in offering solutions to enhance the economic potential of the cultural sector, through new modalities for distribution and reception of cultural experiences. In addition, they open new opportunities to develop art forms, create new sources of economic and cultural value, and incentive new business models.
New Information Communication Technologies (ICT) are vital for the protection, conservation, restoration, research, dissemination and promotion of tangible and intangible cultural assets (Borowiecki and Navarrete, 2017), coming from all types of cultural institutions. However, the question of whether and how ICT add value to collections, museums, and cultural sites and promote access and communication with users/visitors is an open one. The role of ICT on cultural heritage is a relatively new field of research, and, as digital ecosystems are constantly evolving, no general definition has yet emerged (McMasters, 2008). As one may expect, museums and other heritage institutions are being changed rapidly to provide advanced visualization, interactive and social-media services.
We focus on digital technologies because these innovative tools permit to deepen the relationships with existing audiences. Furthermore, they enable arts and cultural organizations to achieve important increases in the audiences. At the same time, innovations call on for the development of new financial and business models for cultural institutions.
Cultural activities are characterized by their specific products: they focus on the “production and distribution of goods and services of artistic and cultural nature, and can be classified in many ways” (Guerzoni, 1998, p. 241). Though this is particularly evident in the case of museum institutions, in general cultural activities are characterized by managing a complex supply, combining the aptitude to preserve culture (for the enjoyment and education of future generations) with the provision of services for access and fruition of cultural products (e.g. exhibition to the public) that augment their value.
Within this context, the following research questions occur:
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Does digitization affect the performance and efficiency of cultural institutions?
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What challenges and which opportunities for heritage organizations come along with the digital shift?
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Does digitization offer opportunities in encouraging new and experimental work?
Cultural production and consumption patterns are being redesigned by the digital revolution, pushing cultural organizations to rethink modalities to relate with visitors. From the financial point of view, they deal with greater accountability for funding, with increased emphasis on performance and efficiency, as well as growing pressure to find new ways to enlarge the revenue potential. In addition, ICT play an increasingly important role in fostering cultural heritage research and educational activities, as well as programs and actions in cultural institutions’ learning environments (Sylaiou and Papaioannou, 2019).