Data from 'The role of art in coastal and marine sustainability'

These data accompany the article ‘The role of art in coastal and marine sustainability' (Matias et al., 2020). The main research question was: What is the role of art in the sustainability of coasts and seas? To answer this question we undertook a systematic literature review. We describe the diversity of studies in terms of geographical distribution, art forms, audiences, and their contribution to sustainability. We associate artworks with envisaged human actions (e.g., raising awareness, fostering collaboration, and learning) and relate them with impacts on attitude, behaviour, and knowledge. File 1 is a figure representing the classification of art forms used for this study (adapted from McCarthy et al., 2001). File 2 presents the flowchart diagram for the identification of studies for the systematic review of the literature (adapted from Page et al., 2021). File 3 is the string of search used in Scopus and Web of Science databases. File 4 is the dataset of 79 articles narrowed for this literature review. The * marks the 19 sub-dataset articles that measure impact of the artistic activities.