Enhancing monitoring in protected areas: evaluating mobile apps as a tourism proxy

Protected areas are important environmental conservation sites, but their sustainability depends on effective management to mitigate the negative impacts of nature–based tourism. Data from Mobile fitness apps (MFAs) provide researchers and stakeholders with detailed spatiotemporal information regarding visitor movements, thereby facilitating a comprehensive understanding of visitor behaviour, the implementation of effective monitoring strategies, and the minimisation of tourism–related impacts. Considering the novelty and growth of studies exploring MFAs to understand recreational use in protected areas, it's essential to integrate this emerging field of data science into existing knowledge and establish MFA–based monitoring. A detailed analysis of 26 publications, published between 2012 and 2023, was performed to explore who conducts the research, the main sources of knowledge, where the research is conducted, the core research questions, the data sources used, and which methodologies are employed. Results show that research is primarily conducted by European, Chinese, and Australian scholars within a collaboration network that remains underdeveloped. Studies are mostly influenced by research published after 2010 and focus on visitors' spatiotemporal behaviour analysis and environmental impact assessment. MFAs function as surrogates for on–site visit counts, offering key information that can be utilised for protected area management, promoting sustainable tourism, and ensuring environmental preservation.

BackgroundThe widespread use of mobile fitness apps (MFAs) provided new opportunities to promote regular physical activity and adopt a healthy lifestyle. However, many MFAs have encountered underutilization issues and declining in user stickiness. Promoting the continued use of MFAs is an urgent goal.ObjectiveThis study examined how MFAs’ affordances (tracking, visualizing, reminding, gaming, and sharing) influence users’ continuance intention from a health empowerment perspective.MethodsThis cross-sectional study surveyed 279 users using MFAs and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling.ResultsThe results showed that tracking, visualizing, gaming, and sharing affordances positively impact health empowerment, while reminding affordance had no impact. Health empowerment can positively impact users’ continuance intention. Furthermore, health empowerment mediated the relationships between the MFA's affordances and continuance intention.ConclusionThis study examines the differential effect of MFA's affordances on users’ continuance intention, specifically identifying the affordances that are impactful in driving sustained engagement. Furthermore, this study establishes health empowerment as a fundamental mediating mechanism through which these affordances exert their positive influence on continuance intention. These findings significantly advance the understanding of the nuanced relationship between technology affordance and user behavior in the MFA context. The results provide targeted and actionable design recommendations for mobile fitness app developers to enhance user long-term engagement.

Visitor data is essential for decision-making, policy formulation, and monitoring of protected areas. In this context, the data on the temporal distribution of visitors is essential to characterize influx and seasonality, and even to measure the carrying capacity of a site. However, obtaining information from visitors often involves high costs and long production times. Moreover, traditional visitor data has a limited level of detail. New sources of data can provide valuable information regarding the timing of visits. In this study, we tested the use of geotagged data to infer the temporal distribution of visitors to 15 Spanish national parks, and we identified temporal patterns of the visits at three levels: monthly, weekly, and daily. By comparing official monthly visitor counts and geotagged photographs from Flickr, we observed that the number of monthly users who upload photos significantly reflects the number of monthly visitors. Furthermore, the weekly and daily distributions of the Flickr data provided additional information that could contribute to identifying the periods of highest visitor pressure, design measures to manage the concentration of visitors, and improve the overall visitor experience. The results obtained indicate the potential of new data sources for visitor monitoring in protected areas and to open opportunities for future research. Moreover, monitoring tourism in protected areas is crucial to ensure the sustainability of their resources and to protect their biodiversity.

A phenomenological study was conducted to explore how Chinese consumers perceive fitness mobile apps in their everyday lives. Twenty in-depth interviews were used to collect data. Findings suggested that the meanings of mobile fitness apps are multidimensional, dialectical, and multilayered. On the positive side, mobile fitness apps embody control, empowerment, and networked individualism which assist Chinese consumers in achieving their fitness goals, maintaining healthy lifestyles, and enhancing the quality of their lives. On the negative side, mobile fitness apps have a constraining effect, geographically and temporally speaking. Some participants even linked fitness app use to their feelings of loneliness. Practical implications were offered to mobile fitness app companies and health organizations.

Background: Mobile fitness applications are increasingly used to promote health behaviors; however, their role in supporting long-term habit formation remains underexplored. Objective: This systematic literature review aims to examine how mobile fitness apps contribute to the development and maintenance of health-related habits, particularly in promoting physical activity and diet management, and to identify the motivational mechanisms and design strategies underlying sustainable behavior change. Methods: A systematic search and analysis of relevant studies were conducted, focusing on behavior change techniques (BCTs). A conceptual framework was developed to synthesize the findings. Results: The review identified a growing trend toward personalized and adaptive design strategies in mobile fitness apps. However, implicit, context-aware interaction strategies were found to be underutilized. While mobile fitness apps demonstrated potential in supporting habit formation, ethical concerns related to passive data collection emerged as a challenge.

This study examines how users' continuance intention toward mobile fitness apps is formed, using an analytical framework of "value creation-satisfaction evaluation-platform lock-in." Based on 704 valid survey responses, the study applies PLS-SEM, NCA, and fsQCA. The PLS-SEM results show that entertainment attributes and service attributes significantly improve user satisfaction, which in turn increases continuance intention. Switching costs also have a significant positive effect on continuance intention, whereas the direct effect of social attributes on satisfaction is not significant. The NCA results indicate that entertainment attributes, service attributes, and satisfaction are moderate necessary conditions for high continuance intention. The fsQCA results further reveal multiple configurations leading to high continuance intention, which can be grouped into three patterns: "multidimensional value-high satisfaction," "function-lock-in driven," and "social-entertainment synergy." Overall, the findings suggest that users' continuance intention toward mobile fitness apps is not determined by a single factor in a linear way. Instead, it is jointly shaped by service experience, entertainment experience, satisfaction, accumulated platform value, and different combinations of conditions. This study extends the explanatory framework for continuance behavior in mobile fitness apps and offers practical implications for improving product design, implementing user segmentation strategies, and enhancing voluntary user retention.

This study examines mobile fitness app (MFA) adoption and use using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2). CB-SEM analysis of 445 respondents through IBM- AMOS was conducted. UTAUT2 constructs were examined including, consumer satisfaction, e- loyalty, and mobile fitness app reuse. Also, the roles of socio-demographic factors as control variables were examined. The results indicated that UTAUT2 significantly influenced user perception of MFAs. UTAUT2 constructs increased user satisfaction. User satisfaction positively and significantly influenced e-loyalty and app reuse. The study also suggests future research on UTAUT2's role on MFAs. The study highlights UTAUT2 by revealing the constructs that influence MFA adoption, and selected consequences. Keywords: Mobile fitness apps, technology adoption, UTAUT2, user satisfaction, customer loyalty, continued intention to use.

Digital technologies, including participatory Internet mapping, social media and smartphones, provide new avenues for research in outdoor recreation and tourism. The potential to reach a greater audience and collect visitation data on a broader scale, with less costs than traditional paper surveys, are key advantages that have increased the use of these novel technologies. Using of mobile apps for data collection is still at the experimental stage. We evaluate previous attempts to use apps for monitoring recreation and tourism in protected areas, as an alternative to other in situ or online methods. We present a pilot study implemented in Jotunheimen National Park (Norway), where we developed a mobile app for visitor monitoring and real-time mapping of values and experiences. We present the lessons learned, give suggestions on how and for what apps can be used, and discuss the advantages and limitations of using smartphones for visitor monitoring in protected areas.

Protected Areas (PA) are widely studied, especially related to effectiveness strategies for environmental conservation and ecotourism management. Research on tourism planning and management in natural environments is fundamental. Several methodologies have been created to obtain data for indicating guidelines for the management and planning of PA. This paper analyzes, discusses and makes complementary suggestions to the carrying capacity methodology developed by Cifuentes et al. (1999). Our aim was to lower the subjectivity content of Carrying Capacity (Cifuentes et al. 1999), and to incorporate several impact indicators in the monitoring process. Data were collected on Ibitipoca State Park trails in August 2018 and April 2019. Results demonstrated that flooding, soil surface degradation, exposed tree roots and canopy layer are core for carrying capacity visitors, totaling 959 tourists per day. Water quality was altered through the parameters: Specific Conductivity (966 mS/cm) and Total Dissolved Solids (624 mg/L) and Conductivity (173 mS/cm) and pH (3.69). The discussions and results highlight the need for a broader approach to the physical parameters, the adoption of qualitative variables, the increase of biological and ecological factors. Therefore, the analysis of the carrying capacity methodology aims to assist more comprehensive strategies integrated with planning and monitoring of PA.

Protected Areas (PAs) receive billions of visitors every year, principally for nature-based tourism (Balmford et al., 2015). However, the increasing numbers of visitors, the multifaceted objectives, and variety of stakeholders, have made the management of PA tourism progressively more difficult. PA agencies are increasingly involving stakeholders such as local people, the private sector, and non-governmental organisations, in managing recreation and tourism. This research investigates governance arrangements for tourism in PAs and explores collaborative partnerships between tourism stakeholders. The research aim is to investigate PA tourism partnerships to improve the understandings, performance, and outcomes of protected area tourism. The research aims to find out how the governance and management of protected area tourism can be improved. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the research will integrate perspectives related to PA tourism management, governance, collaborative governance, and project evaluation. The expected outcome of this research is to develop criteria, a methodology, and performance indicators for evaluating PA tourism partnerships to improve governance, management, and evaluation processes. Tourism partnerships will be investigated through the lens of the Theory of Change, a methodological approach for investigating and evaluating social problems and providing applicable solutions. The study will follow the philosophy of pragmatism as its research paradigm. It will employ a qualitative research approach and a case study research design. Qualitative data will be obtained from semi-structured interviews that will be analysed by employing a thematic technique using NVivo software. In this presentation, I aim to present the research goal, questions, gap in knowledge and the methodology that will be used in this study. I will talk about protected areas tourism, it’s positive and negative impacts, and the collaborative multi-stakeholder’s governance and partnership models for managing tourism in PAs.

BackgroundA survey conducted by McKinsey & Company reported that, as of May 2022, as many as 26% of Indonesians had recently started to engage actively in physical activity, 32% undertook regular physical activity, and 9% exercised intensely. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has spurred the rapid development of mobile fitness apps (MFAs) used to track people’s sports activities. However, public interest in using these apps for any length of time is still relatively low.ObjectiveIn this study, we aimed to determine the effect of incentives (eg, self-monitoring, social support, platform rewards, and external influence) on the use of MFAs and the moderating effect of gender on users’ continuance usage intention.MethodsThe study used a mixed methods approach. Quantitative data were collected through a web-based questionnaire and qualitative data from interviews with 30 respondents. The quantitative data, collected from 379 valid responses, were processed using covariance-based structural equation modeling. The qualitative data were processed using thematic analysis. The MFAs included in this research were those used as sports or physical activity trackers, such as Apple Fitness, Strava, Nike Run Club, and Fita.ResultsThe results of the data analysis show that 3 groups of incentives, namely, self-monitoring, platform rewards, and external influence (with the exception of social support), affect the perceived usefulness of these apps. Gender was also shown to moderate user behavior in relation to physical activity. The study showed that women were more likely to be motivated to exercise by social and external factors, while men paid greater attention to the tracking features of the app and to challenges and rewards.ConclusionsThis research contributes to the field of health promotion by providing guidance for MFA developers.

On the morning of 18 May 2005, 14 pickup trucks with about 150 people armed with machetes, pistols, rifles, shotguns, and automatic weapons rolled into a camp in the eastern part of the Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre, Guatemala. At 338,000 ha it is the largest national park in Central America and an important RAMSAR site. Their leader announced they came from the village of Nuevo Amanacer and other recent, illegally established, villages within the park. These recent immigrants demanded that their development needs take precedence over conservation and the rights of the indigenous Qeq'chi Indians. To enforce their demands they took over the camp that had been established by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Guatemalan National Park Service as a base for fire control, park management, and wildlife research. After a period of negotiation, the group returned to Nuevo Amanacer, taking with them four hostages and leaving behind some 20 local Qeq'chi. They then called the local WCS field office on their satellite phone and declared that the hostages would be released only when the governor of the state of Péten clarified their land and resource rights within the park. This situation is more complex than a simple conflict (with clear winners and losers) between local people and conservationists. The immediate winners were certainly the immigrants, who as reward for their act of kidnapping received a promise of a school, provision of technical assistance, and construction of a road into the heart of the park, conceded by the governor of the Péten to secure release of the hostages. The long-term winners will probably be absentee cattle ranchers and their political allies in the Péten, who have encouraged movement of the people of Nuevo Amanacer into the park as a step in a wider, speculative drive for land in the park. The main losers were the Qeq'chi people living in the nearby town of Paso Caballos, whose livelihoods are tied to the park. The Qeq'chi have been attempting to stabilize their rights to land and resources in and around the park in the face of competition from new immigrants from the highlands and speculation by local political and business interests. The WCS staff who were kidnapped were working with the Qeq'chi to document and secure Qeq'chi rights, thus making the conservation staff targets. Although the violence of this case may be unusual, the complexity of the scenario is not. Complexities, so evident in Laguna del Tigre, are too often ignored in the increasingly simplistic discourse on parks. Indeed, the very term park has become a shibboleth—a richly textured Hebrew concept denoting a saying that is widely used or a belief that is widely held, especially one that interferes with somebody's ability to speak or think about things without preconception. As a shibboleth, the term park is being used by both conservationists and social advocates as a coarsely textured term increasingly devoid of meaning. The discourse on parks is being driven toward brittleness (i.e., lack of resilience)—bad news for both protected areas and people living in and near them. On their side, conservationists are understandably concerned about threats to protected areas created specifically to conserve biodiversity. They fear empty forests, encroachment on isolated relicts of once extensive ecosystems, money wasted on development that does not deliver poverty reduction, and park outreach schemes that simply increase pressure on parks by attracting people toward them as the only glimmer of opportunity in an ocean of poverty. And, the argument becomes brittle with blanket calls to exclude all people living in parks, except occasionally those engaged in traditional use of resources. The advocates for rural peoples, for their part, also drive the argument toward brittleness. Much of the empirical evidence of adverse impacts of parks on people comes from in-depth case studies in particular locations. These often do not adequately reflect wider social, political, or economic processes. Terms such as fortress conservation or fences and fines are neat and eye-catching, but they do not reflect a nuanced understanding of social and political patterns and dynamics of rights in land and resources. Social scientists have set out bold and effective criticisms of the social dimensions (and especially social effects) of park creation, and content with their hostile critique they have not often engaged with the issue of policy reform. This is a dialog of the deaf. In the rush for rhetorical purity, both sides have dismissed, or ignored, the rich conversations that are taking place concerning people and protected areas. These include the redefinition of existing protected areas and the creation of new ones. The World Parks Congress (and its convener, the World Conservation Union) engaged in a process to refine protected area categories, some of which incorporate both people and their active economic management of land (e.g., category 5, Protected Landscapes and Seascapes, and category 6, Managed Resources Protected Areas). Advocates for local people focus much of their scorn on the most exclusive categories 1 and 2 (Strict Nature Reserves, Wilderness Areas, and National Parks). Conservationists, by contrast, focus all their attention on a broader set of categories, seeking to exclude or limit human occupation, seemingly determined to create wilderness, even in places that have had a human presence for a long time, and strictly interpret the trade-off between human use and biodiversity, even when the science is available only by analogy with other areas. There is not a single definition of “a park.” Rather, parks fit into a variety of categories and incorporate people and their economic endeavors in different ways. Parks set out to achieve different things, and they suit different situations. Parks and the forces that support them can, in some circumstances, help local peoples economically and provide a means for them to secure their indigenous or existing rights to land in the face of rival claims from powerful external actors. The Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre in Guatemala has the potential to do exactly that. Brockington et al. (this issue) are right to urge more vigorous and effective analysis of the impacts of parks on people and people on parks. Their observations on the complexity of the relationships, and the associated need for careful and subtle research, are extremely important. Such studies are overdue and to many will be novel. Wilkie et al. (2006 [this issue]) demonstrate that in the case of Gabon it can be done. This kind of approach should become a standard and integral part of the planning and monitoring of protected areas. Protected areas of all types will not survive without people—inside them, using them in sensible ways, or outside them, respecting them and defending them. Protected areas are a type of land use. Their uses are multiple and multiplying. In Madagascar, for example, plans to realize the Durban Vision—the tripling of the area of protected areas announced by President Marc Ravalomanana at the Fifth World Parks Congress in 2003—are broadening existing strict park and reserve categories. New protected areas include land managed by communities and sites of cultural significance. The critical point is that such areas contain features widely judged within Madagascar (and outside) to be of sufficient importance to deserve protection from destruction by external forces. Carrying on a shrill debate about parks, as if all parks are the same, is mutually destructive. Such arguments deploy what J. P. Brosius (1999. Current Anthropology40:277–309) has called “essentialized images”—ways of creating political value by strategically deploying images that stereotype or flatten the range of contradictions always present in conservation. This might seem to make good tactical sense to passionate point-scoring opponents of parks and advocates. Strategically it is a disaster because this stereotyping is driving the global debates about parks toward brittleness—with our own internal dissent opening up parks to other land uses. Both nature and local peoples could lose in the current struggle. As the debate becomes more brittle, the complex reality of parks is being lost—the social and political setting within which they are set, the process of their establishment, the way they are managed in response to the changing world around them. Shibboleths emerge from and in turn feed arguments, but they do not provide solutions.

Recent years, China is facing an increasingly severe obesity situation. With the further improvement of the life quality of the youth in China, fitness consciousness has gradually been deeply rooted in people’s heart, thereby, people’s demand of fitness is at a status of steep rise. Mobile fitness apps then attracted a large number of young people’s eyes. Nevertheless, the profit model of this kind of apps is still at a stage of diversified development, and the model is relatively blurry and chaotic. The problem of profit model is one of the significant reasons lead to the slow development of mobile fitness industry. Through comparing these three mobile fitness apps and make an analysis about the current situation of the profit model of mobile fitness apps in our country and then find out the deficiency of existing profit models and explore the potential profit models in the future.

Purpose- The main purpose of this paper is to propose a research model conceptual through the extension study of goal-setting theory (GST) and gamification on mobile fitness app user engagement among Malaysian millennial group. This paper is discussed the justification of goal-setting theory (GST) and gamification in supporting engagement relationships.
 Methodology- This paper proposed a quantitative method in determine the relationship between independent and dependent variables of engagement behavior. It also used a cross-sectional design because the data will be collected in a short period of time.
 Findings- The finding of this paper is expected to support the justification of goal-setting theory (GST) and gamification in explaining the user engagement relationship. It also enriches the knowledge of goal-setting theory (GST) and gamification in body of literature.
 Practical Implication- A further studies should be given to the goal-setting theory (GST) and gamification in order to enhance the user engagement on mobile fitness app especially for Malaysian Millennial Group.
 Social Implication- By studying goal-setting theory (GST) and gamification in mobile fitness app engagement context, it will promote a healthy and fitness lifestyle among Malaysian millennial group that also can contribute to healthy lifestyles practice in social community.

The goal of this research was to compare the self-reported estimates of daily physical-activity data provided to the Healthy People 2020 research team via a telephone survey to the mobile fitness app real-time reporting of physical activity using Twitter. The fitness tweet classification data set was collected from mobile fitness app users who shared their physical activity over Twitter. Over 184 days, 2,856,534 tweets were collected in 23 different languages. However, for the purposes of this study, only the English-language tweets were analysed, resulting in a total of 1,982,653 tweets by 165,768 unique users. The information and data gleaned from this data set, which reflected 184 days of continuous data collection, were compared to the results from the Healthy People survey, which were compiled using telephone interviews of self-reported physical activity from the previous week. The data collected from fitness tweets using the five mobile fitness apps suggest lower percentages of people achieving both the 150 to 300 and 300+ min levels than is reflected in the Healthy People survey results. While employing Twitter and other social media as data-collection tools could help researchers obtain information that users might not remember or be willing to disclose face-to-face or over the telephone, further research is needed to determine the cause of the lower percentages found in this study. Though some challenges remain in using social media like Twitter to glean physical-activity data from the public, this approach holds promise for yielding valuable information and improving outcomes.