Are blue flags a good indicator of the quality of sea water on beaches? An empirical analysis of the Western Mediterranean basin

Abstract

Beach tourism in an important industry in many countries, and in the Mediterranean it supposes an extra pressure on the seawater quality. Concern about this aspect led the European Union to issue a first directive on the quality of bathing water in 1976 and modify it in 2006. This regulation establishes a mandatory control, in all European Union (EU) countries, of the proliferation of bacteria (specifically Intestinal enterococci and Escherichia coli) that can cause serious harm to public health. Meanwhile, the Blue Flag program born in 1987 as an award granted by the Foundation for Environmental Education, to which all municipalities that so wish can voluntarily participate, aimed to publicly value beaches. This award adds to the beaches that receive it a commitment to superior water quality, among other requirements, to that required by the European Union which attracts tourists. The aim of this paper is to obtain empirical evidence of beaches awarded with a Blue Flag (BF) have cleaner waters than those ones that have not in the three main tourist destinations in the Mediterranean that represents circa 5000 coastal monitoring points: Spain, France and Italy. The results point out that the BF areas have significantly cleaner waters than the monitoring points that are not in these areas.