Investigation of the Spatial Distribution of Tourists Traveling to National Parks Worldwide by Geo-tagged User-generated Content

Keywords: Spatial distribution, national parks, geo-tagged, user-generated content, ArcGIS
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

Abstract

The legendary wonders of nature in national parks have been widely known among global travelers. While researchers observed a steady and rapid growth in national park visits in terms of both inbound and outbound travel, measurement and analysis of this important global phenomenon is surprisingly limited. With rapid advances in information technology, geo-tagged data have become more convenient for exploring spatial patterns of tourist behavior. The spatial distribution of tourists provides insights about travel demands and flows, facilitating park planning, development, and management. In this study, we analyzed 408,842 geo-tagged TripAdvisor reviews from over 200 countries focusing on the spatial pattern of tourists’ travel movements to 83 world-famous national parks. This study aims to provide observations on residence information of global national park visitors, exploring the changes in the visitations as measured by the number of reviews among parks. Also, this study examines tourists’ preferences on park locations based on residence information, identifying the shift in the past decade. Major findings are visualized by ArcGIS tools. The results of this study provide a valuable observation of the spatial patterns of national park travel all over the world. This study offered a global image of tourists traveling to national parks in the world.