Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, Utah State University, 5215 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322, USA.
Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, 5215 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322, USA.
Environ Manage. 2021 Jan;67(1):120-132. doi: 10.1007/s00267-020-01373-7. Epub 2020 Oct 15.
Social media are being increasingly used to inform visitor use management in parks and protected areas. We review the state of the scientific literature to understand the ways social media has been, and can be, used to measure visitation, spatial patterns of use, and visitors' experiences in parks and protected areas. Geotagged social media are a good proxy for actual visitation; however, the correlations observed by previous studies between social media and other sources of visitation data vary substantially. Most studies using social media to measure visitation aggregate data across many years, with very few testing the use of social media as a visitation proxy at smaller temporal scales. No studies have tested the use of social media to estimate visitation in near real-time. Studies have used geotags and GPS tracks to understand spatial patterns of where visitors travel within parks, and how that may relate to other variables (e.g., infrastructure), or differ by visitor type. Researchers have also found the text content, photograph content, and geotags from social media posts useful to understand aspects of visitors' experiences, such as behaviors, preferences, and sentiment. The most cited concern with using social media is that this data may not be representative of all park users. Collectively, this body of research demonstrates a broad range of applications for social media. We synthesize our findings by identifying gaps and opportunities for future research and presenting a set of best practices for using social media in parks and protected areas.
社交媒体越来越多地被用于公园和保护区的访客使用管理。我们回顾了科学文献的现状，以了解社交媒体已被用于衡量公园和保护区的游客量、使用的空间模式以及游客体验，以及未来可以如何被用于这些目的。地理标记的社交媒体是实际访问量的良好代理；然而，之前的研究中观察到的社交媒体与其他访客数据来源之间的相关性差异很大。大多数使用社交媒体来衡量多年访问量的研究，很少有研究测试在较小的时间尺度上使用社交媒体作为访问代理。没有研究测试使用社交媒体实时估计访问量。研究人员使用地理标记和 GPS 轨迹来了解游客在公园内的旅行地点的空间模式，以及这些模式如何与其他变量（例如基础设施）相关，或者因游客类型而异。研究人员还发现社交媒体帖子的文本内容、照片内容和地理标记有助于了解游客体验的各个方面，例如行为、偏好和情绪。使用社交媒体最常被引用的问题是，这些数据可能无法代表所有公园使用者。总的来说，这一系列研究展示了社交媒体的广泛应用。我们通过确定未来研究的差距和机会，并提出一套在公园和保护区使用社交媒体的最佳实践，对我们的发现进行了总结。
