The Value of Common Cultural Goods (CCGs): A Realist Evaluation Framework to Assess the Impact of Re-Use Interventions on Commons-Like Cultural Heritage

When analysing cultural heritage, research has focused on the expectational value of the built heritage, while little attention has been given to value multiplicity attributed to cultural assets by local communities. To enhance knowledge about the latter, the paper sets the basis for the development of an evaluation framework to analyse the effects deriving from community-based re-use interventions on the built environment. The proposed realist evaluation framework, based on Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configurations, promotes a shift in the understanding of cultural heritage as commons-like goods, conceptualised as Cultural Common Goods (CCGs). The proposed evaluation framework gives execution to the Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage and provides a meaningful way to analyse how different forms of community engagement in the different contexts contribute to the generation of societal outcomes. Literature review and analysis were conducted to identify the context (C), mechanism (M) and outcome (O) dimensions to be taken into consideration for the evaluation. This allowed to identify the components to be addressed when evaluating re-use interventions on commons-like cultural heritage.