The guideline presented delivers a cross sectoral, participatory approach promoting sustainable coastal land use planning that focuses on the supply and demand of resources. A crucial aspect is to initiate informal planning sessions aimed at the fulfilment of multiple demands by taking local and regional actors’ knowledge and opinions into account. It is suggested that the participatory approach allows for the merging of the scientific concepts of the ecosystem services approach and social impact assessment. The interaction with stakeholders in the research process demonstrated that transparent and participative planning sessions are necessary to achieve sustainable land use management and to take into account the different ambitions and needs of the various sectors. During the research process, the stakeholders saw the additional value of the guideline, which assisted them to understand sustain- able land management and influenced further actions. Additionally, the participative process also indicated that the willingness of stakeholders to adopt innovations in decision-making processes increases in accordance with their level of participation in the development process. The proposed guideline deepens our understanding of the mutual dependencies and interactions between ecosystem services and their social impacts and promotes interdisciplinary, integrative research as well as the transfer of courses of action for decision-makers. The guideline offers a new basis on which to successfully make decisions and also promotes a collaborative and transparent planning process. By facilitating the incorporation of ecosystem services into the decision-making process, ecosystem services become projectable, while the impact assessment strengthens the ecosystem services approach by incorporating the demands of society. Clearly, the different interests of the stake- holders must to be brought together and when stakeholders with individual expertise work together they will be able to further enhance future projects. Thus, in cooperation with local stakeholders, it is possible to develop new sustainable land management strategies that take a holistic view. The guideline uses social impact analysis as a bridging concept to make the ecosystem services approach more accessible, translating social impacts into ecosystem services. The guideline also helps explain possible land use changes arising from the sphere of planning in terms of social impacts. This operationalization of the ecosystem services approach and social impact analysis shows that social demands and the provision of ecosystem services are inherently connected.