Visitor patterns and emerging activities in national parks revealed by social media posts.
Researchers from the Digital Geography at the University of Helsinki have been studying whether social media data could be used to understand visitor’s activities in national parks and most recent results are presented in Scientific reports: Instagram, Flickr, or Twitter: Assessing the usability of social media data for visitor monitoring in protected areas.
National parks are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation and provide recreational benefits to humans. Park management and planning require up-to-date information about visitor amounts and their activities.
“As conservation authorities often lack resources to carry out traditional visitor surveys, social media offer a novel and cheaper means of collecting such information”, says Dr. Enrico Di Minin, a conservation scientist investigating nature-based tourism benefits. Read the rest of the official press release here.
