Using social media to measure and map visitation to public lands in Utah

摘要

We used nine years of geotagged social media posts uploaded to Flickr and Panoramio to investigate the ability of social media to measure and map spatial patterns in visitation to national parks, national forests, and state parks in Utah, USA. Our analysis shows support for the use of geotagged social media to supplement data collected through traditional means (e.g., on-site counts of visitors) as part of visitor use monitoring protocols. However, we did observe notable differences in the amount of variance in reported visitation explained by geotagged social media. Social media posts made within national parks and national forests captured substantially more of the variation in reported visitation relative to posts made within state parks. We attribute this to a variety of factors including the unique types of sites managed within the state park system, lower levels of visitation relative to national parks and forests within the state, and the method by which the state estimates visitation. We use exploratory spatial analyses to investigate spatial patterns of visitation across public lands. The analysis, performed at three different spatial scales (statewide, region, and county) illustrate the diversity of ways in which geotagged social media can inform outdoor recreation and tourism planning efforts and supplement traditional methods of measuring visitation. Our investigation demonstrates how social media can serve as a useful tool to inform proactive planning and management efforts.