SUMMARY FOR ARTICLE

The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of social impact assessment principles to evaluate the contribution of cultural heritage to social sustainability, supporting both a people-centered and socially responsible approach to heritage management. it does so by providing findings of the case study application: this offers empirical insights for the underexplored rural settings while the discussion of sia a tool form planning within the context of heritage projects evaluation aspires to contribute to research on improving planning and operational management processes. despite the common use of sia for detecting negative consequences of projects in this case only positive impacts were identified based on the hypothesis that engagement with cultural activities can support rather than inhibit individual and social well-being and connection with place moobela et al. i/m project manager the resulting set of nodes/quality indicators developed here through this bottom-up analytical process table iv can be categorized as both descriptive and evaluating in the sense that they look at quality outputs providing a way for considering social impacts of projects in contrast to output analysis and quantitative methodologies for assessing impacts that tend to be the only criteria for accounting on projects success. looking at implications of our findings for practitioners and planners we consider that sia when realized by relying on the participation of the same organizations that undertake the initiatives can enable organizations to reflect on the impact of their practices for the communities they serve and achieve an authentically iterative circle between project planning and project evaluation figure that can link better decision making in higher levels policy and practice project planning and delivery in the heritage sector.