Motivations and barriers to heritage engagement in Latin America: tangible and intangible dimensions

In this paper, we consider two ways of getting engaged with cultural heritage: visiting historic sites and monuments, and participating in community celebrations. We consider a sample that covers 18 Latin American countries and use data from the Latinobarómetro 2013 survey. We estimate zero-inflated ordered probit models to relate the intensity of the engagement to each dimension of cultural heritage and variables that characterize personal cultural capital, socioeconomic status, civic participation and community of residence. Our analysis finds three key dimensions to identify participation patterns: formal educational attainment, level of economic deprivation and degree of civic engagement. Higher educational attainment and better economic status are associated with greater probability of participating in both forms of heritage activities, tangible and intangible, and with a more intense participation in the tangible dimension. Individuals are also more likely to participate when they are also community-involved.