Crowdsourcing social values data: Flickr and public participation GIS provide different perspectives of ecosystem services in a remote coastal region

Abstract

Spatial planning and environmental management are expected to adopt participatory processes. However, the needed spatial data on social values of ecosystem services are limited, especially for marine spatial planning for large, remote coastal areas, and the collection of such information can be time and resource intensive. Crowdsourcing techniques are cost efficient sources of social values data, but must meet the information needs of planners and managers with sufficient confidence. We evaluated the reliability of crowdsourced social values data by assessing the agreement between geotagged photos posted to the social media platform Flickr and data from an online public participation GIS (PPGIS) survey conducted to support marine spatial planning in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.Flickr could not represent all of the social values mapped in the PPGIS dataset, was notably dominated by scenic values, and under-represented the importance of recreational fishing and Aboriginal cultural values. The Flickr dataset was more affected by accessibility from settlements and transportation infrastructure (roads, boat ramps) and more restricted spatially. Maximum entropy (maxent) distribution models developed to explore the socioecological drivers determining where social values occur also highlighted that Flickr and PPGIS samples provide different perspectives on social values, even after accounting for differences in sampling intensity. The Flickr dataset suggested that the social values occurred under narrower ranges of socioecological conditions, and the PPGIS dataset was more likely to find protected areas to be valued, likely because participants believe protected areas to support those social values, but may not themselves pursue them there.Flickr and PPGIS crowdsourced datasets provide different perspectives on the spatial distribution of social values for several reasons: They differ in their spatial and demographic biases, as well as their measurement of revealed vs. stated preferences. Flickr is most effective at representing social values that are easily photographed and interpretable in photos, and may not capture some information needs of managers. PPGIS is under greater investigator control but, because stated preferences can be disconnected from actual use of the sites mapped, may be best suited for assessing management preferences and social acceptability. With understanding of the nuances of these datasets, crowdsourced social values data can be applied most appropriately to support successful planning outcomes.