Valuing beaches for beauty and recreation only? Uncovering perception bias through a hashtag analysis

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearch

Authors

Sandy beaches are ecosystems that hold great economic value at local, national, and international level. However, their perception as social-ecological systems is often limited by users and managers to the recreational asset, and their perception of “beauty”. Such a perception bias can hamper conservation management, negatively impact the biodiversity on sandy beaches and even threaten the ecosystem services they provide. To survey this perception bias, we applied the method of netnography to analyse Instagram posts with the hashtag #sandybeach, extracting perceptions and values for nature (intrinsic, instrumental, and relational) towards sandy beaches and their ecological features. We used the concept of littoral active zone (LAZ) to define the boundaries of this social-ecological system that spans the land and the sea. Our results show that Instagram users focus on their social media mainly on the recreational values of sandy beaches and prioritise ecological features fitting into an imaginary of a “pristine” beach, characterised by white sand and clear water – therewith supporting the hypothesis about a perception bias on sandy beaches. We identified a diverse set of relational values, especially around recreation and aesthetics, with a very marginal number of posts mentioning intrinsic or instrumental values. A recurring activity on LAZ was surfing, which emphasises the LAZ (wave break point, surf zone). To conserve the biodiversity and ecosystem services of sandy beaches, we see it as necessary to move away from a biased and narrow perception to one that, based on the LAZ as a system, is capable of including a diversity of biogeographical and ecological features, and the natural processes that maintain them.
Original languageEnglish
Article number105707
JournalMarine Policy
Volume155
ISSN0308-597X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.09.2023

Bibliographical note

L.F. acknowledges the creative and multidisciplinary working environment established within the PREGO project (grant agreement No. 241 , Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI)) and General Secretariat for Research and Innovation (GSRI)) at IMBBC-HCMR, which allowed her to explore beyond the comfort zone of ecology.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Direct negative density-dependence in a pond-breeding frog population
  2. Spatial and seasonal distribution of trace metals in floodplain soils
  3. Testing for Economies of Scope in European Railways
  4. Application of stress intensity factor superposition in residual stress fields considering crack closure
  5. Ringen um Sinn
  6. Collaboration for a more sustainable agriculture – when does it work?
  7. Effect of Welding Speed on Friction Stir Welds of PM2000 Alloy
  8. Analysis of benzalkonium chloride in the effluent from European hospitals by solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography with post-column ion-pairing and fluorescence detection
  9. Carbon Management Accounting and Reporting in Practice
  10. The measurement of work ability
  11. Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess
  12. Leveling up? An inter-neighborhood experiment on parochialism and the efficiency of multi-level public goods provision
  13. Priming effects induced by glucose and decaying plant residues on SOM decomposition: A three-source 13C/14C partitioning study
  14. Das Essen und seine Genderscripte.
  15. Phantasmal Spaces
  16. The prospects of product carbon footprints in ERP systems
  17. Implementing education for sustainable development in the German school system
  18. Give and take frames in shared-resource negotiations
  19. The Effects of Altruism and Social Background in an Online-Based, Pay-What-You-Want Situation
  20. Framing climate uncertainty
  21. Reconceptualising Business-IT Alignment for Enabling Organisational Agility
  22. The Managerial Relevance of Marketing Science: Properties and Genesis
  23. Epistemologies of Diversity and Otherness
  24. Effects of pesticides on community structure and ecosystem functions in agricultural streams of three biogeographical regions in Europe
  25. Cultural influences on social feedback processing of character traits
  26. Land use modulates resistance of grasslands against future climate and inter-annual climate variability in a large field experiment
  27. Mathematics teachers’ domain-specific professional knowledge: conceptualization and test construction in COACTIV