For the Australian heritage manager, management of a place is a value-laden enterprise with a vast degree of difference between values. Decisions regarding management of Australian heritage sites require knowledge of the site and the degree of significance that the place holds – whether archaeological, scientific, social, and / or historic. Attitudes towards heritage and its level of importance may be affected by a person’s cultural background. Understanding visitors, including an appreciation of their differing values of importance regarding heritage, is needed so that appropriate management decisions can be implemented. Knowledge of the type(s) of methodology to best ascertain cross-cultural differences appears to be limited. It would appear that methodological guidelines in undertaking cross-cultural research are mostly limited to language translation, conceptual and experiential equivalency, with measurement equivalency the most difficult to achieve between Asian and Western cultures. The investigation concentrated on the countries of Japan and the USA. In terms of both cultural and heritage visitor numbers and greatest expenditure per night, these two countries are amongst Australia’s top four. The USA is comparatively young, only a few hundred years old in regards to its built heritage sites, whereas Japan has a longer history, being a few thousand years old. Control groups in each country were also included so that if any influences from the research sites occurred, the control group would allow a more objective indication of cultural backgrounds. From the results, attitudes towards heritage are influenced by cultural backgrounds. The results indicate that first and foremost, Americans value and place greater importance upon culturally built heritage, whilst the Japanese value and place greater importance upon the intangible – the stories of the place, the people and the social values of the time. From the research, a conceptual and strategic framework for the Australian heritage manager regarding marketing to these two cultural groups is proposed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/279181 |
| Creators | Bronwyn Jewell |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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