What can beach litter tell about local management: A comparison of five pocket beaches of the North Sardinia island (Italy).

Our study provides a first dataset on marine litter collected at five pocket beaches situated in the northern Sardinia (Italy). The monitoring method refers to the operational guidelines for rapid beach assessment of beach waste described by UNEP. We classified the 7975 items collected according to the eight categories and 99 types. Their analysis indicates that plastic is the most common litter category and, plastic fragments are the most frequent debris. The density ranges from 0.05 to 2.82 item/m2. The top 10 highly present marine litter reveals that land-based litter is the main source, probably due to the lack of waste management, massive tourism and recreational activities. In addition, landscape morphology affects the redistribution of marine litter. Overall, these first results are part of a wider study on the presence of marine litter in the pocket beaches of north Sardinia to provide coastal managers and policy makers mitigation strategies.

Data for the analysis of willingness to pay for Italian beaches.

The data presented herein relates to the article entitled "Willingness to pay for management and preservation of natural, semi-urban and urban beaches in Italy" [1]. Data of several Italian beaches are collected considering shape, anthropogenic characteristics, use, activity and urbanization levels. Descriptive statistics of beach characteristics and beach users are presented, on the basis of about 5000 interviews.