# RECORD 07b241fa57ce2f3e40926461143e077561f2a1cd
# TITLE: Urban Heritage and its Socioeconomic Impacts in Seoul, South Korea: An Empirical Study Using Residential Environmental Satisfaction and Housing Price as Indicators
# YEAR: 2022.0  VENUE: Journal of people, plants, and environment  DOI: 10.11628/ksppe.2022.25.3.311
# AUTHORS: Minki Sung; Mary R. Brooks
# PAGES: 18  CANDIDATE TABLE PAGES (1-based): [10, 11, 12]
# ABSTRACT: Background and objective: Recent research has highlighted the need for urban heritage conservation due to rapid urbanisation, especially in Asian cities; however, few studies have investigated the socioeconomic impacts of heritage assets in urban contexts. This study examined urban heritage sites in Seoul Metropolitan City from the perspective of residents' environmental satisfaction and housing prices.Methods: A spatial regression model was developed to examine the associations between urban heritage sites and their corresponding protected areas as the independent variables (nationally assigned cultural heritage, city-assigned cultural heritage, nationally registered cultural heritage, nationally assigned cultural heritage protected area, and city-assigned cultural heritage protected area) and residential environmental satisfaction and housing prices as the dependent variables. The model investigated how urban heritage sites influence housing prices through the mediating effect of residential environmental satisfaction.Results: The results confirmed the impact of urban heritage sites on housing prices and the mediating effect of residential environmental satisfaction. Moreover, depending on their urban heritage classifications, noticeable differences were evident in the impact of urban heritage sites.Conclusion: These findings provide an intellectual foundation for public policies, offering insights into how they might achieve an optimum balance between private and public interests in matters of heritage conservation.


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MinKi Sung and Mary Brooks
Journal of People, Plants, and Environment Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022∙311
Introduction
More than two-thirds of the world's population now lives 
in urban areas (UNESCO, 2019, 2020). Urban heritage sites 
are under considerable pressure due to rapid urbanisation 
and development. Growing literature demonstrates that ur-
ban heritage sites in Asian cities are particularly vulnerable 
to rapid urbanisation because public policies tend to favour 
building infrastructure rather than preservation projects 
(Kiruthiga and Thirumaran, 2019; Logan, 2020; Pai, 2013; 
Tan and Ti, 2020). Urban heritage is often targeted for 
transformation during rapid transitions to urbanisation 
(Kiruthiga and Thirumaran, 2019). Similarly, uncontrolled 
development dramatically impacts urban areas, leading to 
the fragmentation and deterioration of heritage sites and 
seriously impacting their value (UNESCO, 2019).
Considering this intense pace of demolition and re-
development (Tan and Ti, 2020), urban heritage sites need 
J. People Plants Environ. Vol. 25 No. 3: 311-328, June 2022
https://doi.org/10.11628/ksppe.2022.25.3.311
JPPE
Urban Heritage and its Socioeconomic Impacts in Seoul, South Korea:
An Empirical Study Using Residential Environmental Satisfaction and 
Housing Price as Indicators
MinKi Sung1* and Mary Brooks2
1Doctoral student, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom
2Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
Background and objective: Recent research has highlighted the need for urban heritage conservation due to rapid urbanisation,
especially in Asian cities; however, few studies have investigated the socioeconomic impacts of heritage assets in urban 
contexts. This study examined urban heritage sites in Seoul Metropolitan City from the perspective of residents' environmental
satisfaction and housing prices.
Methods: A spatial regression model was developed to examine the associations between urban heritage sites and their
corresponding protected areas as the independent variables (nationally assigned cultural heritage, city-assigned cultural 
heritage, nationally registered cultural heritage, nationally assigned cultural heritage protected area, and city-assigned 
cultural heritage protected area) and residential environmental satisfaction and housing prices as the dependent variables.
The model investigated how urban heritage sites influence housing prices through the mediating effect of residential 
environmental satisfaction.
Results: The results confirmed the impact of urban heritage sites on housing prices and the mediating effect of residential
environmental satisfaction. Moreover, depending on their urban heritage classifications, noticeable differences were 
evident in the impact of urban heritage sites.
Conclusion: These findings provide an intellectual foundation for public policies, offering insights into how they might 
achieve an optimum balance between private and public interests in matters of heritage conservation.
Keywords: conservation areas, cultural values, heritage management, heritage valuation
This paper is based on my master’s dissertation at Durham University. I would like to thank Mrs Clare Carr in the Durham Centre for Academic
Development for her advice on the draft of the master’s dissertation. I also thank my classmates in the course of International Cultural Heritage
Management at Durham University for supportive discussions and feedback as was developing Master’s dissertation topic.
Received: April 27, 2022, Revised: May 11, 2022, Accepted: May 16, 2022
*First author & Corresponding author: MinKi Sung, mingi5678@nate.com, 
 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6665-9383
Ⓒ 2022 by the Society for People, Plants, and Environment. This is a Peer-Reviewed Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative 
Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, 
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


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Urban Heritage and its Socioeconomic Impacts in Seoul, South Korea: An Empirical Study Using Residential Environmental Satisfaction and Housing Price as Indicators
320∙Journal of People, Plants, and Environment Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022
and local Moran's I levels (Fig. 2) and higher values for 
R2 and log-likelihood, compared to the OLS model, the 
study also employed spatial regression models.
The results indicated that the SLM was the most suitable 
model for single-unit and apartment housing types whereas 
SEM was the most appropriate model for multi-unit hous-
ing prices. First, both the SLM and SEM approaches con-
firmed that nationally and city-assigned cultural heritage 
sites positively influence all types of housing prices. 
Second, nationally assigned cultural heritage areas neg-
atively influence multi-unit and single-unit housing prices. 
Last, nationally assigned cultural heritage protected areas 
did not have a negative influence on apartment housing 
prices. Table 7 summarises the major findings of this study, 
including the best model and the statistically significant 
independent variables for each dependent variable, to in-
vestigate further the mediating effects of residential envi-
ronmental satisfaction.
The proposed best models for each dependent variable 
are illustrated in Table 7. To examine the relationship between 
residential environmental satisfaction and housing prices, 
the urban heritage sites that influence residential environ-
mental satisfaction and housing prices were determined. 
The results demonstrated that nationally and city-assigned 
Dependent variable
Residential environmental satisfaction
Housing environmental 
satisfaction
Social environmental satisfaction
Educational environmental 
satisfaction
OLS
SLM
SEM
OLS
SLM
SEM
OLS
SLM
SEM
Constant
6.164***
5.840***
6.189***
5.668***
6.833***
5.623***
5.502***
5.667***
5.499***
Urban 
heritage
Nationally assigned cultural 
heritage
9.647**
9.652**
9.700***
1.498**
1.453***
1.320***
8.470*
8.318**
8.046**
City-assigned cultural heritage
6.594
6.618*
6.502*
1.201*
1.213**
1.237**
5.888
5.829
5.671
Nationally registered cultural 
heritage
2.390
2.155
1.509
1.071
1.202
1.913
1.452
1.493
1.587
Protected 
area
Nationally assigned cultural 
heritage protected area
-4.11*
-4.134**
-4.321**
-5.705*
-5.632**
-5.747***
-4.319*
-4.286**
-4.308**
City-assigned cultural heritage 
protected area
-4.873
-1.062
-2.714
-8.557
2.159
5.901
3.593
6.834
1.278
Rho
0.053
-0.208
-0.030
Lambda
0.201
-0.368*
-0.060
R2
0.375
0.377
0.397
0.443
0.475
0.517
0.320
0.321
0.322
Adj. R2
0.210
0.297
0.141
Log-likelihood
9.179
9.214
9.409
1.176
1.671
2.210
7.495
7.504
7.510
Akaike information criterion
-6.358
-4.427
-6.819
9.647
10.658
7.58
-2.989
-1.008
-3.021
Schwarz criterion
0.9551
4.105
0.494
16.961
19.190
14.893
4.324
7.525
4.293
Jarque-Bera
2.047
2.365
1.580
Koenker-Bassett
6.792
8.592
2.942
Breusch-Pagan
5.721
6.856
6.224
6.669
7.617
10.235
4.669
2.918
3.104
White test
24.103
24.095
21.500
Lagrange multiplier (lag)
0.059
0.732
0.013
Robust LM (lag)
0.212
0.032
0.002
Lagrange multiplier (error)
0.206
1.060
0.011
Robust LM (error)
0.358
0.361
0.000
Likelihood ratio test
0.069
0.461
0.989
2.068
0.019
0.032
Note. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Abbreviations: Adj.: adjusted, OLS: ordinary least squares, SLM: spatial lag model, SEM: spatial error model, and 
LM: Lagrange multiplier.
Table 5. Analysis of residential environmental satisfaction


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MinKi Sung and Mary Brooks
Journal of People, Plants, and Environment Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022∙321
cultural heritage sites influenced residential environmental 
satisfaction and all types of housing prices. These sites 
were therefore chosen for further analysis.
The results demonstrated the mediating effects of resi-
dential environmental satisfaction on housing prices using 
the SEM (Table 8). Nationally assigned cultural heritage 
sites and their corresponding protected areas influenced 
housing, social, and educational environmental satisfaction, 
while city-assigned cultural heritage sites influenced housing 
and social environmental satisfaction. Consequently, the me-
Dependent variable
Housing prices
Multi-unit housing price
Single-unit housing price
Apartment housing price
OLS
SLM
SEM
OLS
SLM
SEM
OLS
SLM
SEM
Constant
2.082***
3.183***
1.988***
6.715***
9.736***
6.530***
4.233***
6.220***
4.058***
Urban 
heritage
Nationally assigned cultural 
heritage
32.894*
26.428**
22.759**
149.256*
128.683**
122.364**
65.303*
52.128*
47.444*
City-assigned cultural heritage
615.622***
569.628***
588.366***
3506.27***
3272.31***
3269.85***
1123.6**
1036.71***
1034.77***
Nationally registered cultural 
heritage
5643.460*
5193.710***
6355.090
3564.860
2926.870
4787.610
6600.320
6017.530
7568.770
Protected 
area
Nationally assigned cultural 
heritage protected area
-79.246
-80.974
-66.361***
-434.961
-426.940*
-430.480*
-128.721
-128.812
-147.212
City-assigned cultural heritage 
protected area
-161.24
-4.750***
19.971
-141.567
419.925
377.239
-338.176
30.136
131.417
Rho
-0.461
-0.399
-0.438
Lambda
-0.489**
-0.333
-0.404*
R2
0.618
0.715
0.720
0.690
0.753
0.723
0.445
0.554
0.530
Adj. R2
0.518
0.609
0.300
Log-likelihood
-484.199
-481.736
-481.662
-520.156
-518.212
-519.378
-506.858
-505.190
-505.683
Akaike information criterion
980.397
977.471
975.324
1052.310
1050.420
1050.760
1025.720
1024.380
1023.370
Schwarz criterion
987.711
986.003
982.637
1059.620
1058.960
1058.070
1033.030
1032.910
1030.680
Jarque-Bera
10.038**
22.559***
9.851**
Koenker-Bassett
2.673
6.484
4.120
Breusch-Pagan
6.018
5.409
5.679
2.177
5.770
5.024
1.966
4.622
3.199
White test
24.339
24.969
24.766
Lagrange multiplier (lag)
3.106
2.359
1.818
Robust LM (lag)
0.106
2.157
1.183
Lagrange multiplier (error)
3.211
0.789
1.107
Robust LM (error)
0.210
0.587
0.472
Likelihood ratio test
4.926*
5.073*
3.888*
1.556
3.336
2.350
Note. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Abbreviations: Adj.: adjusted, OLS: ordinary least squares, SLM: spatial lag model, SEM: spatial error model, and LM: Lagrange 
multiplier.
Table 6. Analysis of housing prices
Dependent variables
Spillover effects of independent variables
Best model
Positive influence
Negative influence
Housing environmental satisfaction
SEM
NA (***), CA (*)
NAP (**)
Social environmental satisfaction
SEM
NA (***), CA (**)
NAP (***)
Educational environmental satisfaction
SEM
NA (**)
NAP (**)
Multi-unit housing price
SEM
NA (**), CA (***)
NAP (***)
Single-unit housing
SLM
NA (**), CA (***)
NAP (*)
Apartments
SLM
NA (*), CA (**)
N/A
Note. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Abbreviations: SEM, spatial error model; SLM, spatial lag model; NA, nationally assigned cultural heritage; CA, city-assigned cultural 
heritage; NAP, nationally assigned cultural heritage conservation area.
Table 7. Summary of overall findings


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Urban Heritage and its Socioeconomic Impacts in Seoul, South Korea: An Empirical Study Using Residential Environmental Satisfaction and Housing Price as Indicators
322∙Journal of People, Plants, and Environment Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022
diating effects of housing, social, and educational environ-
mental satisfaction were analysed, focusing on nationally 
assigned cultural heritage and its protected areas and city-as-
signed cultural heritage. Statistically, social and educational 
environmental satisfaction had a perfect mediating effect 
on the influence of nationally assigned cultural heritage 
sites on housing prices, whereas social environmental sat-
isfaction had only a partial mediating effect on the influ-
ence of city-assigned cultural heritages on housing prices 
(Table 9).
Nationally assigned cultural heritage protected areas 
negatively influenced multi-unit, single-unit, and apartment 
housing prices via the perfect mediating effect of social 
and educational environmental satisfaction. This suggests 
that there is a public perception that conservation areas 
impose on personal property rights and restrict local devel-
opment (Ko, 2015; Veldpaus et al., 2013). Educational en-
vironmental satisfaction had no effect on the relationship 
between city-assigned cultural heritage and housing prices.
Fig. 4 presents the overall findings that illustrate how 
urban heritage sites influence housing prices through resi-
dential environmental satisfaction using parallel coordinate 
plots. The parallel plots of A to B demonstrate how urban 
heritage sites influence residential environmental satisfaction, 
while those of B to C illustrate how residential environ-
mental satisfaction affects housing prices.
Model
SEM
Mediating variable
Housing environmental satisfaction
Social environmental satisfaction
Educational environmental satisfaction
Dependent variable
Multi-unit
Single-unit
Apartment
Multi-unit
Single-unit
Apartment
Multi-unit
Single-unit
Apartment
Constant
-3.191
-2.731
-1.063
-5.380*
-2.956*
-1.563**
-5.522*
-4.023**
-2.264***
Urban heritage
Nationally assigned cultural 
heritage
16.678
83.396
29.759
7.395
49.795
4.756
16.502
72.649
19.213
City-assigned cultural heritage
535.809***
3014.900***
898.745
432.113***
2678.360***
631.303*
542.489***
2923.720***
841.219***
Nationally registered cultural 
heritage
5805.400
2408.100
6329.15
6016.930***
3192.100
6844.740
6042.030***
2989.930
6562.250
Protected area
Nationally assigned cultural 
heritage protected area
-39.514
-225.843
-58.912
5.005
-71.736
54.715
-12.551
-77.063
49.292
City-assigned cultural heritage 
protected area
-46.377
47.102
-51.838
-89.799
-50.780
-139.232
-93.454
-104.570
-178.300
Residential 
environmental 
satisfaction
Housing environmental 
satisfaction
8.493
5.521*
2.402
Social environmental 
satisfaction
1.313**
6.402***
3.502**
Educational environmental 
satisfaction
1.370*
8.522***
4.869***
Note. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
Table 8. Mediating effect analysis summary
Independent variables
Mediating analyses
Mediating variables
Dependent variables
Results
NA, CA, NAP
Housing environmental satisfaction
Multi-unit housing prices
N/A
Single-unit housing prices
Apartment prices
NA, CA, NAP
Social environmental satisfaction
Multi-unit housing prices
NA, NAP: Perfect mediating effect, CA: Partial 
mediating effect
Single-unit housing prices
Apartment prices
NA, NAP
Educational environmental satisfaction
Multi-unit housing prices
NA, NAP: Perfect mediating effect
Single-unit housing prices
Apartment prices
Note. NA, nationally assigned cultural heritage; CA, city-assigned cultural heritage; NAP, nationally assigned cultural heritage protected area.
Table 9. Summary of mediating effects


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MinKi Sung and Mary Brooks
Journal of People, Plants, and Environment Vol. 25, No. 3, 2022∙323
Conclusion
The study's findings confirm that urban heritage sites 
in Seoul influence housing prices, with residential environ-
mental satisfaction having a mediating effect. Differences 
in the influence of the different categories of urban heritage 
sites (Fig. 4) were also noted. Nationally assigned heritage 
sites positively influenced all types of residential environ-
mental satisfaction, consequently affecting the prices of all 
housing types. Only social and educational environmental 
satisfaction positively influenced housing prices via a per-
fect mediating effect, implying that housing environmental 
satisfaction is an indicator of individual benefits that have 
not been transformed into economic benefits. This result 
is also consistent across nationally and city-assigned cul-
tural heritage sites. Thus, nationally assigned heritage sites 
have positive socioeconomic benefits.
According to the Korea Cultural Heritage Protection Act 
(2018), city-assigned heritage sites are local heritage sites 
that have fewer recognised values. Although they do influ-
ence housing prices via social environmental satisfaction, 
they only have a partial mediating effect on them, possibly 
because they have a lower ranking. They do not positively 
influence educational environmental satisfaction; this is 
consistent with current practices, as most educational inter-
pretive activities and school trips take place in or around 
nationally assigned cultural heritage sites (Korea Culture 
and Tourism Institute, 2012; Kim, 2021).
Nationally registered cultural heritage sites did not have 
a statistically significant influence on residential environ-
mental satisfaction and housing prices (Table 7). These 
sites are also known as modern cultural heritage―cultural 
assets dated between 1876 and 1971 (50 years before the 
current year)―that contain remnants of Seoul's modernisa-
tion process (Pan and Min, 2009). These sites have consid-
erable potential for teaching modern Korean history in the 
form of school trips, as they offer reference points between 
Seoul's past and present (Shipley and Snyder, 2013); how-
ever, these sites are generally not recognised as cultural 
resources, as they are considered an unwanted legacy of 
Japanese colonial rule (Pan and Min, 2009). Consequently, 
many of these sites have been neglected and allowed to 
fall into disrepair (Park, 2021). Thus, future research should 
focus on developing the untapped potential of these sites 
Fig. 4. Overall research findings.