Living heritage under pressure: a social-ecological resilience assessment of intangible cultural heritage in tourism destinations

Tourism sustainability increasingly depends on intangible cultural heritage (ICH) resilience, yet many assessments remain limited to static safeguarding indicators or narrow economic valuations. This study developed and applied an expert-informed diagnostic assessment framework that operationalized selected principles of social–ecological resilience for comparative evaluation of ICH projects at a tourism destination. A three-dimensional six-force framework comprising 24 indicators was applied to 22 nationally and regionally recognized ICH projects in Guilin, South China. The framework captured inheritance vitality, inheritance carrying capacity, governance synergy, cultural perception and participation, cultural value and attraction, and market-related adaptive capacity. A mixed-methods approach integrated Delphi consultation, analytic hierarchy process weighting, and Fishbein–Rosenberg aggregation to generate composite resilience scores, with robustness assessed through sensitivity analysis. Principal component analysis and K-means clustering were used as exploratory tools to identify descriptive resilience profiles, while radar visualizations supported a comparative diagnosis. Results revealed substantial variation: Yao Oil Tea Custom exhibited the strongest diagnostic profile, whereas many projects showed uneven resilience conditions associated with inheritance discontinuities, limited governance coordination, or restricted adaptive capacity. The framework offers a cautious diagnostic tool for comparing ICH resilience conditions and informing differentiated heritage governance reflections within the limits of a single-destination, expert-based, cross-sectional design.