Assessing Equity in Public Beach Access with Spatial Intersectionality

Previous research on beach access typically uses socioeconomic variables such as race or ethnicity and different levels of wealth to identify marginalized groups. Such an additive approach, however, fails to consider the intercategorical intersectionality between variables when defining marginalized groups. Moreover, there is little research that assesses the spatial variability of intersectional groups in relation to public beach access. This study addressed these gaps by empirically examining the spatially heterogeneous intercategorical intersectionality of race or ethnicity and poverty in terms of public beach access. A geographically weighted regression was employed via a case study of 784 census tracts in the Metro Detroit area. The results showed that economically marginalized White neighborhoods, overall, had greater access to public beaches than economically marginalized African American and Asian neighborhoods had. Furthermore, there exists spatially heterogeneous (in)equitable access to public beaches depending on the type of intersectional composition of the neighborhood. These findings are useful for beach managers to allocate resources to neighborhoods in need of more access to public beaches.