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Abstract Beach Certification Schemes (BCS), especially the Blue Flag (BF), have received increasing attention in the literature. The critics of BF focus their attention on aspects that certification was not designed for, confusing its role as a beach management tool with a panacea for all challenges faced by tourist beaches. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to review empirical studies on aspects that generate controversy, and to provide arguments and new perspectives on the role and scope of BF and BCS. The paper also identifies research gaps and proposes directions of future studies. The issues are discussed through six major themes highlighting the true value of Blue Flag for urban, village and rural beaches. The paper calls for more empirical and comprehensive studies that evaluate beaches before and after BF implementation, documenting the differences BF has made to specific beaches and entire beach destinations including their economic and political context. Highlights • Certifications are beach management tools not designed to respond to all challenges. • Strengths of beach certifications have not been studied; hence their low perceived value. • Blue Flag is a powerful tool to align political will towards beach management. • Certifications can be cost effective despite their low recognition by users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Of all the forms of tourism, visiting a beach is one of the most popular. The objective of this study was to determine whether satisfaction levels of beach visitors could be predicted using a hierarchical linear regression. This research drew on 1451 complete surveys conducted at rural and urban beaches across Ontario, Canada. Using a hierarchical multivariate regression, a model for predicting overall beachgoer satisfaction was developed. The model is able to predict 24.2% of variance in overall beachgoer satisfaction levels. While visitor demographics and beach demographics account for 2.8% of the explanatory power, the greatest explanation of variance comes from the perceptual measures (21.4%) – satisfaction with facilities and beach. Utilizing these findings, destination management operations will be able to better manage their visitors' overall satisfaction levels, negative impacts such as overtourism, and increase their likelihood to revisit. Highlights • A quarter of the variance in a beachgoers overall satisfaction can be predicted. • Visitor and beach characteristics have little impact on overall beachgoer satisfaction. • Satisfaction with facilities and beach are the strongest predictors of beachgoer satisfaction. • Beach location has an impact on overall beach satisfaction. • Overall beach and experience satisfaction contributes positively to a beachgoers intent to return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to identify factors affecting beach environments and to establish a multi-criteria evaluation structure for tourist beaches. This structure is intended to inform beach managers on where and how they should invest resources to achieve sustainable beach tourism. A critical review of literature related to beach quality criteria was made. Interviews with experts were conducted in the identification of factors with respect to a high-use tourist beach in southern Taiwan. Four major dimensions were extracted from a number of factors using factor analysis: cleanliness of beach environments, safety, beach protection and management, and facilities and services. The fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach, a decision-making method based on pair-wise comparisons between criteria, was then used to construct a three level evaluation structure with criteria and associated weights for beach managers. The results show that cleanliness of beach environments and safety are considered relatively important factors in the second level. Among 15 attributes, water quality standards, clean beaches, safe access to beaches, management of different uses, sediment and habitat management, information provision, controlled waste discharge, and a beach management committee are the top half rankings in the third level. Management implications from the findings were discussed, with an emphasis on managing beach in an integrated manner. At last, a step-by-step model was highlighted as a practical way to assist policy makers to find priority factors and engage in effective beach management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jellyfish bloom events in the Northeast Atlantic (NEA) are perceived to be increasing, based on a rise in reports of their interactions with human activities, including coastal recreation. However, few studies have assessed the potential impact of bloom events on coastal recreation in the NEA. This article reports findings of a questionnaire carried out with beach users to assess the possible impacts and potential management implications of an increase in jellyfish blooms at St Ives, Cornwall which is a popular seaside resort in the UK and was selected as the case study location. Impact to coastal recreation was estimated based on a revealed preferences valuation of beach visits and beach recreation that occurred using a travel cost model and its effect, based on projected change in overall visit patterns under jellyfish bloom scenarios. Under a scenario where blooms of jellyfish stingers cause beach closures, 42% of respondents reported that they would avoid the St Ives coasts entirely, resulting in an estimated use loss of £11,182.50 per day. Under a second scenario, where blooms of non-stingers occur on open beaches, 13% of visitors would avoid the beaches and coast, resulting in an estimated daily use value loss of £3461.25. Through an estimated valuation of willingness of beach users to donate to a hypothetical bloom management scheme, 40% of respondents stated that they would be willing to contribute to anti-jellyfish nets to limit the impact of blooms, with a projected benefit of £6000. Results suggest that jellyfish blooms could cause significant impact to coastal recreation in a UK seaside town. However, jellyfish management schemes have the potential to mitigate some of the impact. Further studies are required to determine whether the local impacts estimated in the present study are indicative of regional, UK-wide recreational behaviour change and losses in response to bloom events. • Perceptions exist that increased interactions between people and jellyfish blooms are occurring in the Northeast Atlantic. • Future increases in jellyfish blooms in the UK have the potential to cause impact to the coastal tourism sector. • A decrease in recreational use value of the coasts under two bloom scenarios are projected using a case study approach. • Through stakeholder preferences, significant use value decreases were projected from the bloom scenarios. • Hypothetical bloom management was assessed, showing potential to maintain use value of the coastal ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal landscapes such as beaches are popular as they provide a range of leisure opportunities for locals and tourists, with people increasingly sharing these experiences on social media. Researchers have started to harness social media data to assess how people engage with coastal landscapes but most studies are at local scales. We expand this approach by examining the popularity of close to 12,000 beaches across Australia including temporal, spatial, text and sentiment analysis including Generalized Linear Models. Metadata associated with 32,383 images from Flickr tagged "beaches" and "Australia" posted by 1,254 Australians, and 1,154 international tourists were obtained. With images representing around 9,000 visitor days and covering 33% of the 60,000 km coastline, differences were apparent where Australians were more likely to visit beaches on weekends than weekdays and northern beaches in winter but southern beaches in summer: factors that were less important for international tourist. Australians were also more likely to post images of beaches in capital cities and tagged them with words relating to natural features, while international tourists also posted images of urban and more remote beaches and tag them with geographical locations. The text of tags reinforced how some Australian beaches are very popular and that they are predominantly associated with positive emotions. Despite limitations associated with these methods, the results highlight how social media data can be used to complement other approaches for large scale monitoring of coastal landscapes including identify priority areas for active management using a rapid, remote and low-cost approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beaches are important tourism resources in coastal areas and have become the preferred destinations for coastal tourism. For scientific management of beach resources, the economic benefits of beach nourishment and beach tourism should be evaluated. Therefore, using Xiamen as a case study, this study reviews beach nourishment actions, establishes a model to quantify the beach tourism economy; thus, it analyzes beach tourism's economic contributions to Xiamen's overall economy to contribute to the literature on scientific management of beach resources and tourism development. During the period between 2012 and 2018, the total beach tourism revenue increased from 9.718 billion yuan to 25.238 billion yuan, increasing by a factor of nearly 2.6 over 6 years. In 2018, beach tourism directly contributed 10.091 billion yuan to Xiamen's gross domestic product (GDP), accounting for 2.11% of Xiamen's GDP; the comprehensive contribution was 31.559 billion yuan, accounting for 6.63% of Xiamen's GDP in 2018. Beach tourism has boosted related industries in Xiamen's economy. Meanwhile, over the past few years in Xiamen, the income elasticity coefficient of beach tourism demand has been greater than 1, indicating a relatively high-income elasticity of demand. After analyzing the economic contributions from coastal tourism in Xiamen, this study proposes that beach tourism can be promoted through beach management and beach nourishment. The development of coastal tourism is a feasible strategy for enhancing the regional economy, and coastal tourism is conducive to improving the economic structure in Xiamen. [Display omitted] • The effect of beach management on beach tourism is analyzed based on a typical coastal city in China. • Beach tourism promotes the regional economic development of a typical coastal city. • Beach tourism improves the economic structure of a typical coastal city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]