The 2014 Maine and New Hampshire Beachgoer Survey was a means of follow-up data collection from beachgoers who participated in a short intercept survey in the summer of 2014 led by our NEST colleague Charlie Colgan. Colgan’s team surveyed beachgoers onsite on three beach systems: the Saco Bay area, Wells-Ogunquit, and the New Hampshire Seacoast. In our web-survey, we asked these beachgoers more detailed questions about their opinions, perceptions, and visitation. Incomplete knowledge about who uses public coastal beaches and how they use beaches represents a major information gap for tourism, business, and coastal resource managers. Our survey helps to shrink this gap by providing detailed information about Maine and New Hampshire beachgoers.
We designed the survey questionnaire following scientific, tailored survey design principles, and we refined the content iteratively with input from key stakeholders and NEST colleagues across multiple disciplines and institutions. Before distributing the survey to our sample, we piloted the questionnaire on select beaches in Maine and New Hampshire and made modifications to reflect the feedback of pilot respondents. The final survey instrument included open-ended and categorical question formats that collected information on:
(1) general visitation to coastal areas and beaches
(2) beach-user opinions and attitudes about coastal water quality, coastal management and beach safety
(3) detailed information on beach visits to Maine and New Hampshire
(4) respondent demographic and household characteristics
Our sample of respondents is a subset of the Colgan team’s sample. Their survey represents a sample of Maine and New Hampshire beachgoers, intercepted on select beaches during particular days and times, and our follow-up survey represents a sub-sample of this intercepted group. As a part of their intercept questionnaire, respondents were asked if they would be interested in sharing their email addresses to participate in a follow-up survey about beach visitation. 1,259 intercept respondent provided valid email addresses.
We administered our follow up survey to these respondents in the fall of 2014 using Qualtrics, a web-based survey software tool. We contacted respondents through email and asked them to follow a link to complete the follow-up survey. Our survey administration followed established tailored design and communication methods, and a scientifically supported timeline. We received responses from 437 respondents, 366 of which completed the survey in full.