Document Type

Article

Abstract

Along densely populated coasts, the armoring of shorelines is a prevalent cause of natural habitat loss and degradation. This article explores the values and decision making of waterfront homeowners and identifies two interlinked and potentially reversible drivers of coastal degradation. We discovered that: (1) misperceptions regarding the environmental impacts and cost-effectiveness of different shoreline conditions was common and may promote armoring; and (2) many homeowners reported only altering their shorelines in response to damage caused by armoring on neighboring properties. Collectively, these findings suggest that a single homeowner’s decision may trigger cascading degradation along a shoreline, which highlights the necessity of protecting existing large stretches of natural shoreline. However, our study also found that most homeowners were concerned with environmental impacts and preferred the aesthetics of natural landscapes, both of which could indicate nascent support and pathways for conservation initiatives along residential shorelines.

First Page

41

Last Page

49

DOI

10.1111/conl.12114

Publication Date

2015

Department

Marine and Environmental Sciences

Comments

This article was published in the journal Conservation Letters by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of the Society for Conservation Biology.

A link to the online published version can be found here:

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12114

The publisher may require a subscription or other payment to access the online version.

The publisher's recommended citation must be used when citing this article.

This article is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license [CC BY 4.0], which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.

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