The value of annual beach access and recreation along the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland has been assessed at nearly half a billion dollars.

That's according to CQUniversity researchers Professor John Rolfe and Daniel Gregg who surveyed more than 1100 households along the Queensland coast between Bundaberg and Port Douglas.

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The researchers identified the number of visits that people made to beaches and the time and costs involved.

"Aussies love that our beaches are free of charge to use, but they don't often consider the huge economic value of beaches themselves," Professor Rolfe says.

"The maintenance of beaches in good condition, with appropriate access and safety are important goals for local authorities and other public bodies responsible for natural assets and public safety. However it is difficult to judge how much funding needs to be allocated to protect and maintain beaches without some information on the recreation values involved.

"The study, which is notable at an international level, assesses recreation values for beaches across a broad region (the Queensland coast adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef) rather than at specific site, and focuses on the values of the local resident population rather than an itinerant tourist population.

"The values that have been estimated are likely to be conservative because other opportunity costs incurred to live closer to the beach (e.g. additional housing costs) have not been assessed."

The resulting estimates of total beach visits indicates the regional population of about 643,000 people aged between 15 and 74 makes an average of 52.6 visits to a beach per year for a total of 12.8 million visits per year.

The average value of each beach visit ranged between $23.79 and $56.98 across regions, and was estimated at $35.09 per trip across the region.

While the total value of annual local beach visits was estimated at $450 million for the region, this varied between regions from $24 million in the Gladstone region to $148 million in the Cairns region.

Professor Rolfe and Mr Gregg recently outlined their 'valuing beach recreation' project at the 48^th annual conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economic Society in Fremantle (Feb 7-10).

The project was funded by the Commonwealth Environmental Research Fund through the Environmental Economics Research Hub.