Cultural resilience of heritage sites: Dimension exploration and scale development

Heritage sites are in a state of instability, facing various disturbances or environmental changes, which may lead to a crisis in cultural protection and inheritance. Importantly, cultural resilience is the key to dissipating these disturbances or even transforming them into sustainable development opportunities, but few studies have conducted theoretical exploration and evaluation on this topic. Therefore, this study aims to conceptualize and develop scales for cultural resilience of heritage sites (CRHS) using online and offline investigations (in-depth interviews, big data mining, and questionnaires). The results from grounded theory procedures reveal that cultural resilience consists of 5 dimensions: cultural resistance, restoration, learning ability, adaptability, and growth. Moreover, a cultural resilience scale with 17 items was developed and proved reliable and valid. This study lays an empirical foundation for the theoretical system development of CRHS and provides resilience ideas and strategies for their cultural protection, inheritance, and sustainable development.