Sustainable cultural routes: a literature review of key fundamental aspects

This paper investigates the cross-disciplinary relationship of cultural routes and sustainable development (social, cultural, economic and environmental). Despite their popularity in the literature, research on cultural routes also faces one particular challenge. More particularly, the majority of studies on cultural routes have adopted a rather uniform methodological approach, focusing almost exclusively on qualitative case studies. This fragmentation restricts the advancement and understanding of a highly dynamic field. 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. The current paper utilizes the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews guidelines. The empirical findings reveal a significant increase on the published material in the last 10 years (2013–2022), with approximately 40% of cases being solely authored. As anticipated, the majority of papers utilized qualitative methods to examine sustainable cultural routes, whereas approximately 45% related to cultural routes with a national 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%). All the above-mentioned indicators are parts of the sustainable development and are essential parts of designation and planning phase of cultural routes.