Keywords

1 Introduction

Cultural routes can be powerful tools to promote and preserve shared values and cultural identities [1]. Cultural Routes and Sustainable development constitute a rising trend in the tourism field, with many research cases [2,3,4,5,6]. However, until today, scarce scientific research had been conducted in the field of “cultural routes”, sustainable development, planning and management [7, 8]. Although there is plenty of qualitative research and case study analysis of cultural routes, there is not any critical review to reveal the significance of cultural routes in accordance with sustainable tourism development [9]. This paper uses a literature review to challenge with the complexity nature of cultural routes, in accordance with sustainability management and planning factors. The in-depth research of 432 studies highlighted a cross-disciplinary investigation of cultural routes and sustainable development principles.

2 Research Method

The current paper utilises the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and the meta-synthesis approach [10,11,12]. The PRISMA statement is a guideline protocol, in order to conduct systematic reviews. This protocol includes a 27-item checklist and a 4-phase flow diagram.

For the purpose of the current study, a literature research was conducted in order to procure cultural route publications. For that purpose, The authors searched through various English academic sources and databases using the text words “cultural routes”, “cultural trails”, “thematic routes”, “routes”, “itineraries”, “cultural itineraries” and “travel routes” in publication’s titles, abstracts and keywords. The eligibility assessment excluded publications that were inaccessible, were not in English language and were not published post-1985. The authors choose 1985 as the reference year because the Council of Europe Cultural Route programme developed in Grenada that year.

Initially, the title, abstract, keywords, type of methodology (qualitative, quantitative and mixed methodology), authors’ names, journal name, year of publication and database were recorded on an MS Excel spreadsheet. The authors also coded the publications in accordance with cultural route territorial scope, cultural scope, goal or function, duration in time, structural configuration and natural environment [3]. The final screening process implemented by the authors, excluded the publications that were focused on tourism destinations and attractions and tourism and hiking—cycling routes, as they were irrelevant with the paper research focus.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Empirical Findings

The initial search identified 6410 records. After the elimination process, the final dataset comprised of 432 publications on cultural routes. Figure 1 shows the number of cultural route publications during the period 1985–2022. Specifically, until 2000, there were only a handful of publications in the field. This finding is in full accordance with the conclusion reached by Timothy and Boyd [9] Prideaux and Carson [13]. During the 2000–2012 period, the field experienced a significant growth in terms of published journal articles and other writings pertaining to the grey literature.

Fig. 1
A bar cum line graph of year of publication. It plots number versus years 1985 to 2022. The bar for 2019 is the highest at 46. It is followed by 2021 at 45. The lowest bars are at 0 for 1986 to 1993, and 1998.

Year of cultural route’s publications

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In our study sample (n = 432 publications), the majority of entries were solely authored (n = 162/38%), followed by publications with two authors (n = 104/24%), and three authors (n = 88/ 20%). Four and five co-authored publications follow suit with n = 47 (11%) and n = 24 (6%) publications respectively. There is also a small amount of publications (n = 7/2%) that have no authors (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
A bar graph of number of authors. It plots number versus authors. The highest bar is for 1 author, followed by 2 authors. The lowest bar is for organization.

Number of authors per publication

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Figure 3 shows the methodological approaches used by researchers in the field. The majority of papers follow a qualitative methodology, with interviews, case study analysis and desk research for cultural routes (55%). 70 publications (16%) provide a literature review for cultural routes or some type of cultural routes. Only 57 publications (13%) use quantitative methodology and 66 publications (15%) use mixed methodology.

Fig. 3
A bar graph of type of methodology. It plots number versus methodology. The highest bar is for qualitative methodology at 240. It is followed by the bars for literature review and mixed methodology at 70. Values are approximated.

Publication type of methodology in the sample size

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Distance and structural configuration dimension are critical for the operation and management of cultural routes [1,2,3, 9]. Figure 4 shows cultural routes’ spatial distribution around the world. It is obvious that the majority of cultural routes are located in Europe. This result was expected given that the Council of Europe set the basis for the management and planning of cultural routes in European countries. In addition, one could also justify this finding on the basis of a more competitive tourism market in Europe, as well as a more “advanced” tourism product, in comparison to the rest of the world [18].

Fig. 4
A spatial distribution world map of cultural routes. Most of the routes are located in Europe. Some of the others routes are located in Asia, Africa, Australia, and America.

Spatial distribution of cultural routes

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In Fig. 5, the greatest amount of publications mentioned one country as a case study (n = 289/67%). The majority of smaller scale cultural routes that exist in order to enhance local economic development [14] could explain this result. Briedenhann and Wickens [15] also highlighted the role that cultural routes play in rural local communities [16, 17]. Next comes the segment of cases where 3 or more countries are coordinating to create a cultural route with a sample of 113 publications (28%).

Fig. 5
A bar graph plots number of cultural routes versus number of countries. The bar for 1 country is the highest at 300 followed by 3 and greater at 130. The lowest bar is for 2 countries at 20. Values are approximated.

Number of countries that consist of cultural routes

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Through the extended literature review on cultural routes, the authors provided a grouping of the focus of cultural routes. The representative set consists of 7 types of cultural routes [9]. These are ‘pilgrimage/religious routes’, ‘environment/ecology routes, ‘gastronomy routes’, ‘industrial/railways routes’, ‘cultural heritage routes’, ‘historical/trade routes’, and ‘mixed routes’. Figure 6 indicates that n = 147 or 34% of the publications consist of the cultural heritage route type. This is followed by the historical and trade cultural routes type (n = 101/23%) and the pilgrimage/religious cultural routes type (n = 71/16%). Next follows gastronomy routes (n = 41/9%), environment/ ecology routes (n = 30/7%) and mixed cultural routes (n = 24/6%). Finally, the last type of cultural route is industrial/railways routes-trails with n = 18 or 4% of the publications in the sample.

Fig. 6
A bar graph of focus of cultural routes. It plots numbers versus type of cultural routes. The bar for cultural is the highest at 147. It is followed by historical at 101. The lowest bar is for industrial at 18.

Focus/type of cultural routes

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It was crucial to categorize the publications according to ICOMOS specifications, for the examination of multidisciplinary nature of cultural routes. Table 1 summarizes the empirical findings. As one would expect, the percentage of papers is almost inversely related to the spatial scope of the analysis or collaboration (the greater the spatial context, the smaller the percentage of cases appearing in the literature).

Table 1 Types of cultural routes according to ICOMOS
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Cultural scope is important, as cultural routes are an integrated system of cultural heritage values and properties between different cultural areas that share a common identity. In our study, most case studies are within a given cultural region, or extended across different geographical areas that have shared mutual influences in the formation or evolution of cultural values (n = 243). A sample of n = 189 publications referred to within a given cultural region or extended across different geographical areas that continue to share a process of mutual influences in the formation or evolution of cultural values. This is important, as ICOMOS, Council of Europe and UNWTO suggest that each cultural route should communicate its cultural heritage values and extend them beyond a country’s borders.

In this research study, the lines between social and economic goal of cultural routes were blurred, so the authors decided to reconcile these categories to one. The greatest number of publications has as a main goal the cultural scope of cultural routes (n = 170/39%), followed by the socio-economic scope of the cultural routes (n = 147/34%) and the political scope of the cultural routes (n = 115/27%). All the above-mentioned indicators are parts of the sustainable development and are essential parts of designation and planning phase of cultural routes [3, 20]. It seems that the research community had studied almost equally the cultural, socio-economic and political aspects of cultural routes.

As for cultural route duration in time the empirical findings indicate that the majority of routes continue to develop under the influence of socio-economic, political, and cultural exchanges (n = 293/68%). This is rather anticipated given the proliferation of studies appearing in the last seven or so years.

ICOMOS also categorize cultural routes, according to their structural configuration as linear, circular, cruciform, radial or network. Linear cultural routes represent 30% of the research sample. The greatest number of publications used a radial or network structural configuration of cultural route (n = 255), which are those that forms a radial shape or create a network that unites several regions. Next come the circular and cruciform configuration with n = 31 and n = 18 cases respectively.

The final classification of ICOMOS types of cultural routes is according to their natural environment: land, aquatic, mixed, or other physical setting. The greatest amount of publications used the land environment (n = 292). Followed by the mixed environment cultural routes (n = 127), which combine terrestrial and maritime transport [21]. Some examples of that type of cultural route are the Camino Real Intercontinental and the Silk Road. These cultural routes represent 30% of the researched sample.

4 Conclusions

The main goal of the research is to evaluate through quantitative empirical evidence the existing knowledge about the sustainable management and development of cultural routes. Despite their popularity in the literature, the majority of studies on cultural routes have adopted a rather uniform methodological approach, focusing almost exclusively on qualitative case studies [9, 19]. Based on the abovementioned observation, the paper aims to perform a systematic quantitative literature review in order to identify, synthesize and analyze existing knowledge on cultural routes through a scientific, structured and reliable process [22].

In total, 432 publications were included to the literature review of the research study. The empirical findings reveal a significant increase on the published material in the last 10 years (2013–2022). The majority of cultural routes had as thematic investigation the cultural heritage tourism. As anticipated, the majority of papers utilized qualitative and literature review methods to examine sustainable cultural routes.

We had illustrated a descent amount of cultural routes studies in accordance with ICOMOS indicators, as they represent the different aspects of trail’s operation and sustainable development management. It seems that 67% related to cultural routes with a national-local spatial context. The greatest number of publications has as a main goal the cultural scope of cultural routes (39%), followed by the socio-economic scope of the cultural routes (34%) and the political scope of the cultural routes (27%). Moreover, as for the structural configuration of the cultural routes, most of them shaped as radial or network (59%) and then come the linear (30%). This is in line with the current literature of the field, as the most cultural routes were evolved from point-to-point visits and linear routes to network routes with an organized stakeholder management [19]. All the above-mentioned indicators are parts of the sustainable development and are essential parts of designation and planning phase of cultural routes [20].