Using social media to quantify nature-based tourism and recreation
Capital University · University of Washington · +2 more institutions
Abstract
Scientists have traditionally studied recreation in nature by conducting surveys at entrances to major attractions such as national parks. This method is expensive and provides limited spatial and temporal coverage. A new source of information is available from online social media websites such as flickr. Here, we test whether this source of "big data" can be used to approximate visitation rates. We use the locations of photographs in flickr to estimate visitation rates at 836 recreational sites around the world, and use information from the profiles of the photographers to derive travelers' origins. We compare these estimates to empirical data at each site and conclude that the crowd-sourced information can…
Citation impact
- FWCI
- 80.49
- Percentile
- 100%
- References
- 26
Authors
4- SASpencer A. WoodCorresponding
Capital University, University of Washington
- ADAnne D. Guerry
Palo Alto Institute, Capital University, University of Washington, Stanford University
- JMJessica M. Silver
Palo Alto Institute, Stanford University, University of Washington, Capital University
- MLMartin Lacayo
Stanford University, Palo Alto Institute
Topics & keywords
- Recreation
- Proxy (statistics)
- Globe
- Social media
- Tourism
- Data science
- Geography
- Ecosystem