Find the one you like! Profiling Swiss parks with user generated content
Resource type
Journal Article
Status
Published
Recommended form of citation (APA)
Komossa, F., Mariño, D., Michel, A. H., & Purves, R. S. (2023). Find the one you like! Profiling Swiss parks with user generated content. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 44(A), Article 100673. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jort.2023.100673
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External DOI
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License Condition
CC BY 4.0 (International)
Proforis OA-status
Hybrid OA
OA-Acknowledgement
This OA publication was made possible by the R&P contracts of swissuniversities.
Topic PHSG
Gesellschaftswissenschaftliche Bildung::Räume, Zeiten, Gesellschaften (RZG)
Fields of Science and Technology (OECD)
Social sciences::Social and economic geography
Abstract
The establishment of national parks originated from the desire to preserve scenic landscape areas of national or regional importance. With more recent diversification of protected area types and goals, obtaining knowledge on how parks are recreationally used has become more challenging for (local) policy makers and park managements, as there is a general lack of systematic and publicly available visitor monitoring data. We analyze recreational park use for 20 Swiss parks of national importance and develop park profiles, using user-generated content from Flickr. The 20 Swiss parks are described by 111,437 unique images taken by 6,468 unique users between 2007 and 2020. We fill an existing research gap by defining park use across three dimensions space, time and users, and combining these in our analyses. The park profiles provide information on diversity of recreational use and serve as a starting point for analyzing how the three dimensions contribute to this diversity. Our results show diverging park uses for the three dimensions indicating that park location matters, especially in terms of peri-urbanity and geographic region. Our method can be translated into European scale analyses, provided that different languages are considered. Park profiles are easy to communicate and easy to interpret tools for (local) policy-makers and park managers to segment the tourism market and develop new park marketing strategies to e.g. streamline visitation flows and reduce the negative impacts of outdoor recreation. In broader terms, our study serves as input for future recreation policy to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of protected areas.
Additional Information
Der Artikel entstand im Zusammenhang des Projekts ValPar.CH. Das Forschungsprojekt ValPar.CH ist eine von drei Teilmassnahmen des Pilotprojekts «Inwertsetzung der Ökologischen Infrastruktur in Pärken» im Rahmen des «Aktionsplans Strategie Biodiversität Schweiz (AP SBS)». https://www.valpar.ch
PHSG Organisation name
Project(s)
Version
Published Version
Access Rights
Open Access
License Condition
CC BY 4.0 (International)
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