The impact of value created by culture on approaching the sustainable development goals: Case of the Baltic States

Abstract

Culture plays an important role in implementing sustainability principles and approaching sustainable development goals across different countries. This paper aims to analyse the relationship between the value created by culture and the implementation of sustainable development goals of countries. The majority of attention in this research is devoted to composing and calculating the integrated cultural value index, which provides clear linkages between value created by culture and sustainable development goals. An expert survey was conducted, during which experts had to assess indicators by ranking them according to importance. There have been 14 indicators included in total to calculate the integrated cultural value index. The values created by culture in the selected Baltic States have been determined by calculating the weight coefficient of each indicator and providing a composite cultural value index. Statistical data analysis unquestionably confirms that cultural input when implementing sustainable development goals is significant, because there exists a very strong positive relationship between the cultural value index and achieved sustainable development goals in all three case studies.