Assessing the popularity of urban beaches using metadata from social media images as a rapid tool for coastal management

Abstract

Coastal natural areas, such as beaches in cities, are valued by locals and visitors for their recreational and aesthetic value. For coastal and beach managers, it is important to know who visits beaches, when and where they go and what they value. However, as beaches are long linear structures often with multiple access points, collecting this data can be challenging. Using data from the image sharing platform Flickr, we compared temporal and spatial patterns of use between locals, Australian and international tourists along 31 km of beaches in the sixth largest city in Australia, the Gold Coast. Beaches are popular with 9.8% of all images of the Gold Coast on Flickr taken from a beach. Out of the nearly 7,000 images posted by 908 people on, or near, Gold Coast beaches, 2,388 were posted by 124 locals, 964 by other Australians, and 1,444 by 234 international visitors, mainly from the USA, United Kingdom and New Zealand. Australians, including locals, were more likely than international visitors to take images early in the day and on weekends. There were images from almost every section of the beaches along the coast, with locals using more of the beaches, and each group having their own favourite places. Locals used more words to describe the images, and the most common used words were related to geographic location, natural features, time of the day and activities or events. Despite important limitations, including who uses social media platforms such as Flickr and why, data from geolocated social media images can be a low cost, quick and effective way for managers and others to monitor spatiotemporal patterns of use of open spaces in coastal cities, complementing traditional data.