Blue gentrification: Sustainably effective, socially regressive, or both? Impacts of coastal housing policies in Sardinia

Coastal management policies aim to curb the degradation of coastline-built environment, but at the risk of exacerbating gaps related to the housing access within local communities, in the context of the blue gentrification paradigm. This paper uses 2008–2023 panel data on real estate prices of residential buildings in Sardinia to evaluate the impact of the 2015 Nuovo Piano Casa (NPC) policy on housing costs, by means of event-study and difference-in-differences estimators. Results show that the policy proved to be socially regressive by increasing housing costs in coastal municipalities, thus triggering the environmental (in)justice towards residents’ housing market in favour of foreign higher-spending tourism-led investments.