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Capturing the Social Importance of Coastal Areas: Measuring Sense of Place Along the New England Coast
Citation:
Mulvaney, K., A. Rudman, N. Merrill, AND M. Mazzotta. Capturing the Social Importance of Coastal Areas: Measuring Sense of Place Along the New England Coast. Social Coast Forum 2020, Charlestown, South Carolina, February 03 - 06, 2020.
Impact/Purpose:
Sense of place scales are useful metrics for estimating how important an area is to individuals or a community. We developed and tested a sense of place scale for coastal access areas to investigate the impacts of changes in water quality on the importance of the site.
Description:
How important are coastal areas? The response to this question can vary depending upon the respondent and their relationship to an area. Community residents, tourists, and others may have different impressions about a site’s importance. Sense of place analyses investigate not only the physical attributes of places but also the meaning and importance attributed to those places by users, visitors, or residents. To date, there has been little assessment of sense of place for coastal areas. Furthermore, there is little understanding of the effect water quality impairments have on those attitudes. Here, we investigated the meanings that people associate with coastal recreation sites in New England. We developed and piloted a site-level sense-of-place scale with questions about place attachment, place identity, and place dependence, adapted for coastal areas from survey questions developed for freshwater locations or other recreational areas. We then implemented the questions in a mixed-mode internet and mail survey of New England residents. Qualitative data on sense of place was also collected in the survey through open-ended questions, as well as in focus groups. Analysis of the integrated qualitative and quantitative data suggests that the sense-of-place scale was useful for capturing place-specific social values of coastal areas. In general, New England residents have a high sense of place for coastal areas, and sense of place values increase with the number of visits by an individual to a site. To explore the relationship between water quality and sense of place, we used water quality perceptions of respondents as well as biophysical data describing water quality impairments for the recreation areas visited. The results indicate higher sense of place attitudes associated with sites that have better water quality. This sense-of-place measure provides a useful metric to improve place-based conservation and provide insights about the social value for coastal areas.
URLs/Downloads:
https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/contributing-partners/news/social-coast-forum-2020.html