Spatiotemporal changes in visitation to U.S. national parks and associated social inequity: A big data approach
Topics: Tourism Geography
, Environmental Justice
, Quantitative Methods
Keywords: National parks, Mobile device location data, Social inequity, COVID-19, Distance decay
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 7
Authors:
Junyu Lu, School of Community Resources and Development, Arizona State University
Xiao Huang, Department of Geosciences, University of Arkansas
John A. Kupfer, Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Columbia
Xiao Xiao, School of Community Resources and Development, Arizona State University
Zhenlong Li, Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Columbia
Hanxue Wei, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University
Sicheng Wang, Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University
Liao Zhu, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Cornell University
,
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on people’s visitation and accessibility to national park service (NPS) units. The realization of many economic, social, and personal benefits of parks hinges on their public access. Traditional methods that have been used to estimate park visitation can be time-consuming and costly, while fortunately, the growing availability of ‘big data’ offers new opportunities for rapid estimation of visitor use. This study investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics in visitation for all NPS units and explored associated sociodemographic factors influencing visitation by taking advantage of the large-scale fine-grained mobile device location data. First, people tend to travel less frequently and in a shorter distance to visit NPS units that the visitation and traveling distance to NPS units was reduced by about 40% in 2020 compared to 2019. Over time, the visitation and travel distance gradually recovered, especially, we found a resurgence in visitation to national parks with a 23% increase in March and April 2021 compared to 2019 after people getting vaccinated. Second, people preferred visiting nature-based NPS units over cultural-oriented ones during the pandemic. Seasonality is a dominant factor to influence people’s visitation and travel distance to NPS units no matter before or during the pandemic, especially for national park and nature-based NPS units. Finally, we highlighted a long-standing social inequity in visiting NPS units – the groups of minorities (i.e., Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics) and lower-income were less likely to visit NPS units than Whites and higher-income, respectively.
Spatiotemporal changes in visitation to U.S. national parks and associated social inequity: A big data approach
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
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