A novel approach to evaluating water quality impacts on visitation to coastal recreation areas on Cape Cod using data derived from cell phone locations.

Linking human behavior to environmental quality is critical for effective natural resource management. While it is commonly assumed that environmental conditions partially explain variation in visitation to coastal recreation areas across space and time, scarce and inconsistent visitation observations challenge our ability to reveal these variations. With the ubiquity of mobile phone usage, novel sources of digitally derived data are increasingly available at a massive scale. Applications of mobile phone locational data have been effective in research on urban-centric human mobility and transportation, but little work has been conducted on understanding behavioral patterns surrounding dynamic natural resources. We present an application of cell-phone locational data to estimate the effects of beach closures on visitation to coastal access points. Our results indicate that beach closures on Cape Cod, MA, USA have a significant negative correlation to visitation at those beaches with closures, while closures at a sample of coastal access points elsewhere in New England have no detected impact on visitation. Our findings represent geographic mobility patterns for over 7 million unique coastal visits and suggest that closures resulted in approximately 1,800 (0.026%) displaced visits for Cape Cod during the summer season of 2017. We demonstrate the potential for human-mobility data derived from mobile phones to reveal the scale of use and behavior in response to changes in dynamic natural resources. Future applications of passively collected geocoded data to human-environmental systems are vast.

Analisis kesesuaian lahan dan daya dukung ekologis untuk wisata rekreasi pantai di kawasan ekowisata pesisir Deaga, Kabupaten Bolaang Mongondow Selatan (Analysis of land suitability and ecological carrying capacity for beach recreation in the coastal ecotourism area of Deaga, southern Bolaang Mongondow Regency)

Coastal tourism industry grows very fast, so it is very potential to be used as an alternative business to increase the income and welfare of coastal communities. The development of an optimal tourism area requires good planning and management. This study assesses the suitability of land for coastal recreational tourism activities in Deaga Village, Southern Bolaang Mongondow Regency, by measuring the biophysical and supporting parameters at 8 observation stations on Deaga Beach, as well as the ecological carrying capacity of the environment calculated by considering the ecological potential of visitors. The results of the analysis of the suitability of tourism in Deaga Village are categorized as ‘very suitable’ for beach recreation activities with ecological carrying capacity that can accommodate 113 visitors per day. Thus, the coastal recreation tourism business in Deaga Village is very potential to be developed; and by paying attention to the ecological carrying capacity, this can be sustainable.---Pertumbuhan industri pariwisata pesisir berlangsung sangat cepat sehingga sangat potensial dijadikan alternatif usaha untuk meningkatkan pendapatan dan kesejahteraan masyarakat pesisir. Pengembangan kawasan wisata yang optimal memerlukan perencanaan dan pengelolaan yang baik. Penelitian ini menilai kesesuaian lahan untuk kegiatan wisata rekreasi pantai di Desa Deaga, Kabupaten Bolaang Mongondow Selatan, dengan mengukur parameter biofisik dan penunjang di 8 (delapan) stasiun pengamatan di Pantai Deaga serta daya dukung ekologis lingkungan, yang dihitung dengan mempertimbangkan potensi ekologis pengunjung. Hasil analisis menunjukkan, kesesuaian lahan wisata di Desa Deaga dikategorikan ‘sangat sesuai’ untuk kegiatan rekreasi pantai dengan daya dukung ekologis yang dapat menampung wisatawan 113 orang/hari. Dengan demikian, usaha wisata rekreasi pantai di Desa Deaga sangat potensial dikembang; dan dengan memperhatikan daya dukung ekologis, maka usaha ini dapat berkelanjutan.

Contingent Behavior and Asymmetric Preferences for Baltic Sea Coastal Recreation

In this study, we augment the traditional travel cost approach with contingent behavior data for coastal recreation. The objective is to analyze the welfare implications of future changes in the conditions of the Baltic Sea due to climate change and eutrophication. Adding to the literature, we assess the symmetricity of welfare effects caused by improvements and deteriorations in environmental conditions for a set of quality attributes. Responses are derived from identical online surveys in Finland, Germany and Latvia. We estimate recreational benefits using linear and non-linear negative binomial random-effects models. The calculated annual consumer surpluses are considerably influenced by the magnitude of the environmental changes in the three countries. We also observe asymmetries in the effects of environmental improvements and deteriorations on the expected number of visits. In particular, the results indicate that deteriorations lead to larger or more significant impacts than improvements in the case of blue-green algal blooms and algae onshore for Finland, water clarity for Germany, and water clarity and blue-green algal blooms for Latvia. For the remaining attributes, the effects are ambiguous.

Relational Environmentalism in Coastal Recreation and Tourism

Given the extensive challenge of marine litter faced by coastal ecosystems, this article aims to illuminate an innovative form of environmental caretaking that builds upon a newly established concept of relational environmentalism. Relational environmentalism is a movement of individuals who purposefully interact with each other and with external bodies in a variety of dynamically developing ways to affect the perceptions, motivations and practical actions for the caretaking of endangered natural environments. As a theoretical contribution, the article conceptualizes eight categories of relational environmentalism: inviting, informing, coaching, norm enforcing, politicizing, mobilizing, intergeneralizing, and bridging. By means of a social media content analysis and primary data from the “Marine Environment Patrol” Facebook site, the article provides the first evidence on what relational environmentalism is and how it is institutionalized in the case of leisure- and tourism-based volunteering to collect marine litter. Furthermore, the article shows that successful campaigning and environmental patrolling in coastal recreation and tourism is a matter of building alliances and exchanging logics across a variety of boundaries and that it depends on a gradual intensification and diversification of communicative and mobilizing measures.

Preprint: Data on Peer Reviewed Papers about Recreational Disturbance of Coastal Avifauna

This data descriptor summarizes the process applied to identify, screen, select and gather data from the content of 142 peer-reviewed papers/sources that report on the sources and impacts of recreational disturbance on coastal avifauna. While populations of resident and migratory coastal avifauna are under threat and diminishing rapidly across the planet, and particularly in association with Asian flyways, many governments are leveraging booming global demand for coastal recreation and tourism in order to deliver economic development to regional communities. The summary data shared via this data description was extracted from papers collected in a systematic literature review that was designed to explore the global literature on the recreational disturbance of coastal avifauna in order to elucidate the state of the global knowledge regarding this issue and to identify management strategies that could be applied at tropical Asian destinations to minimize the impacts of recreational disturbance and thus enhance the ecological sustainability of coastal recreation and tourism across the region. The data shared via the Excel worksheet associated with this data descriptor was extracted from peer-reviewed articles published in English between 1 January 2000 and the 31 December 2018 with the full text of the article available online. These articles were found by searching several online indexing several databases including Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest and Google Scholar.