Developing the Antecedents of Perceived Barriers to Aid Decision-Making for Safeguarding the Sustainability of Intangible Heritage

The preservation of intangible heritage (IH) followed by the advancement of culture is not only a goal in itself, but it also directly contributes to many other United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), such as promoting resilient and sustainable cities, supporting economic growth, creating employment opportunities, and even reducing gender disparity. This exploratory study is an attempt to bridge the gap in our understanding of the barriers to safeguarding and sustaining intangible heritage specifically from the standpoint of architects and facilitate decision-making. Based on an extensive review of literature and discussions with domain experts the following five constructs were identified which could be described as perceived barriers towards IH: Role Complexity, Non-Physical Qualities, Unclear Domain Relationships, Uncertain Definition, and Participatory Problems. The relationships between the five barriers and IH were tested through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) followed by structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothesized model based on a dataset of survey responses received from 198 architects in India.