ACCEPTING LIVING SHORELINES: A DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH STUDY

The dangers of a changing climate continue to face everyone especially those living in coastal communities. The role of educational researchers in investigating this problem continue to escalate as we must work with communities and students in order to foster acceptance of climate resilience measures that are feasible for their communities. One measure that has been shown to reduce erosion, provide habitats for living organisms, and can be a nature-based method to stabilize shorelines are living shorelines. They have considerable benefits over man-made infrastructure. However, their acceptance in some coastal communities has been deemed controversial. In this talk, we will discuss our development of a survey to measure acceptance of living shorelines in students that are enrolled in a coastal environments course taught at a four-year undergraduate institution in the southeastern United States. As part of this talk, we will also highlight preliminary results from a study that also identifies key factors that play a role in governing acceptance of living shorelines. Implications for other key stakeholders will also be discussed.