Decisions on quality assurance criteria of recreational beaches

Abstract

Coastal management of recreational beaches is an important topic that needs to use scientific approaches when decisions have to be taken by an authority or a stakeholder. Coastal recreation, which mainly depends on tourism activities, is strongly linked to the management perspective of a region which is generally the municipal authorities in Turkey. Therefore, reliable quantitative management strategies become an issue of high priority in the management of recreational beaches. In this study, the problem of beach quality assurance criteria was investigated using a hybrid decision-making approach. To eliminate the subjectivity of decision makers and obtain reliable quantitative data, an expert group was invited for an evaluation process consisting of 5 main and 32 sub-criteria related to beach quality using pairwise comparisons and scoring. The results of the study revealed that ‘physical quality’ is the most important criterion followed by ‘ecological and economic’ criteria set. Specifically, cleanliness (9·20%), availability of a discharge node (7·30%) and security (7·22%) dominated the quality assurance policy when deciding on recreational beach locations. It is concluded that quantitative evaluation of beach quality assurance criteria can help in promotion and protection strategies in coastal landscape management.