Instagram, Flickr, or Twitter: Assessing the usability of social media data for visitor monitoring in protected areas

TLDR

Social media data are increasingly used as a proxy for human activity in protected areas, but mismatches with official visitor statistics can arise due to park geography, visitor profiles, and sudden events. The study compares Instagram, Twitter, and Flickr data to evaluate how well social media–derived park popularity and temporal visitor counts match high‑precision visitor statistics in 56 national parks in Finland and South Africa in 2014. The authors systematically compared social media–derived park popularity and monthly visitation counts with official visitor statistics across 56 national parks. The analysis shows that social media activity correlates strongly with park popularity and monthly visitation patterns largely match official counts, with Instagram outperforming Twitter and Flickr, performing better in highly visited parks, and overall indicating that over 60 % of national parks worldwide have Twitter or Instagram activity, though caution is advised.

Abstract

Social media data is increasingly used as a proxy for human activity in different environments, including protected areas, where collecting visitor information is often laborious and expensive, but important for management and marketing. Here, we compared data from Instagram, Twitter and Flickr, and assessed systematically how park popularity and temporal visitor counts derived from social media data perform against high-precision visitor statistics in 56 national parks in Finland and South Africa in 2014. We show that social media activity is highly associated with park popularity, and social media-based monthly visitation patterns match relatively well with the official visitor counts. However, there were considerable differences between platforms as Instagram clearly outperformed Twitter and Flickr. Furthermore, we show that social media data tend to perform better in more visited parks, and should always be used with caution. Based on stakeholder discussions we identified potential reasons why social media data and visitor statistics might not match: the geography and profile of the park, the visitor profile, and sudden events. Overall the results are encouraging in broader terms: Over 60% of the national parks globally have Twitter or Instagram activity, which could potentially inform global nature conservation.