Evaluating the contribution of beach quality awards to the local tourism industry in Wales—the Green Coast Award

The agencies involved in the Green Sea Partnership have designed a beach award scheme, the Green Coast Award (GCA) to develop tourism through sustainable management plans at rural beaches in Wales. To date there has been little evaluation of the value of the GCA. This paper aims to test the underlying presumptions that the GCA drives up environmental standards and promotes tourism through sustainable beach management. Field work was conducted over a 2-week period, selecting 11 case study beaches, five in Anglesey and six in Pembrokeshire. A semi-structured questionnaire was employed to collect data on beach user perceptions and observation techniques permitted recording of actual implementation of GCA standards. Analysis of the sample (n=469) demonstrated that beach users have very little knowledge and understanding of beach award schemes, in particular the GCA, with only 11% stating they had heard of the award and a similar low percentage stating the award was important in beach selection. However, a high degree of correlation was found to exist between what beach users believed to be important beach management issues and their perception of the high level of management of those issues on the case study beaches. Therefore, although the GCA might not be well recognised by beach users the Green Sea Partnership has accurately identified the needs of the consumer, having an indirect impact on the experience of the beach user. All case study beaches were found to offer very high environmental standards, suggesting that management measures introduced by the GCA have improved beach quality. Encouragingly, the results also showed statistically (P=0.05) that beach users who were aware that the beach visited was in receipt of a beach award were also more likely to state a beach award to be important in beach selection. The paper is concluded by suggesting that if further resources are to be invested in the GCA scheme then improved communication must be achieved between the environmental and tourism agencies and greater effort made in promoting the award.