The Role of the Italian Museum System on Economic Development: A Latent Transition Analysis Proposal

Museums and cultural heritage are a resource for local development as they can help attract tourists, generate revenue, to promote inclusion and cultural diversity. The management of museums and cultural heritage can be traced back to some traditional concepts of economic theory. These goods, in fact, satisfy needs that improve a country's civilisation level, providing positive externalities, as cultural heritage positively affects employment in economic sectors (such as tourism) and determines an improvement in human and social capital. In this way, the ability of museums to achieve their purposes of conservation and valorisation of artistic and cultural heritage takes particular relevance. The Italian Survey on Museums and similar institutions, carried out by the Italian Statistical Institute (Istat), the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, the Regions and the Autonomous Provinces since 2011, provides a wide range of information for museums and similar structures. The main research areas analysed are heritage conservation, accessibility to exhibition spaces, visitor orientation, and relations with the external context. The availability of longitudinal data (annually since 2017) allows to analyse the evolution of the Italian museum sector from 2017 to 2021, paying particular attention to territorial detail. From a methodological point of view, a latent class transition analysis is applied. Indeed, as long as longitudinal data has to be analysed, research questions deal not only with museums’ classification but also with respect to classification changes over time.