Gastronomic Heritage as Cultural Value-One of the Rural Revitalizing Factors

It’s important to define and develop research into how cultural heritage can contribute to the revitalisation of local communities. In both urban and rural environments, impacted by social and economic change (de-industrialisation, shifts in agricultural practices, in and out-migration etc.), cultural heritage, configured in both its tangible and intangible forms, has increasingly been viewed as a resource to aid regeneration and revitalisation of local communities with varying degrees of success. The authors’ research indicates that an important role in this direction holds gastronomic cultural heritage, for which demand is increasing.The present research focuses on the manifestations of values of gastronomic cultural heritage in geographically and ethnically different territories – from North European countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to Southeast European countries such as Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Italy. At the same time, the study’s vision survives the opportunity in these seven European Union countries in comparison with the survey results representing the other political system – the view of a group of Belarusian respondents on cultural heritage as an important value in today’s conditions.A survey of individuals in eight countries (n=373 in Romania; n=47 in Bulgaria; n=109 in Croatia; n=200 in Poland; n=100 in Lithuania, n=100 in Italy, n=327 in Latvia and n=66 in Belarus), carried out during 2015, enables us to get insight into perspectives on gastronomic heritage as cultural value in all the countries, to formulate gastronomic cultural heritage marketing development paths in order to continue to increase the demand for these values and hence revitalise economic activity in the rural local communities.