Evaluation of Sustainable Cultural Heritage Management in Rural Areas: A Case Study of Rural Tourism in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Puška, Adis and Štilić, Anđelka and Nedeljković, Miroslav and Pamučar, Dragan and Božanić, Darko (2026) Evaluation of Sustainable Cultural Heritage Management in Rural Areas: A Case Study of Rural Tourism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tourism: An International Interdisciplinary Journal, 74 (4). pp. 591-608. ISSN 1332-7461

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Abstract

Each local community has distinct traditions and customs that define its cultural heritage and make it recognizable. This paper examines how cultural heritage can strengthen and develop rural tourism. To do so, a model was developed to assess the extent to which cultural heritage is integrated into tourism activities in rural areas. The model includes seven rural households in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) engaged in rural tourism, along with ten criteria for evaluating them. Using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), the importance of the criteria and the selected rural households were first assessed through expert evaluation. The results of fuzzy LMAW (Logarithmic Methodology of Additive Weights) indicate that attractiveness (C9) and economic potential (C7) are the most important criteria for evaluating rural households. Ranking the rural households using the fuzzy RAWEC (Ranking of Alternatives with Weights of Criterion) method shows that the Ibrišimović household is the most successful example of integrating cultural heritage into rural tourism offerings. This research offers a new approach to valuing cultural heritage in tourism and aims to support the continued development of rural tourism in BiH through sustainable practices.

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