Economic and social demands for coastal protection

The purpose of this paper is to present methods and examples of economic valuation in the framework of cost–benefit analysis of coastal defense schemes. We summarize the concepts of value in economics and their application to coastal erosion defense. We describe the results of an original benefit transfer exercise on beach recreation, that is, whether and how values known for some sites can be used to assess the value of some other sites. We present six original case studies on the valuation of the benefits of coastal erosion defense; four of them focus on beach recreation in Italy, one focuses on the conservation of the Venice heritage, and one on biodiversity in The Netherlands. The results of the case studies are illustrative of the diversity of values for the many types of non-marketed assets that may be protected from sea erosion.