Estimating temporary populations: a systematic review of the empirical literature

Radoslaw Panczak,Jonathan Corcoran,Elin Charles-Edwards

doi:10.1057/s41599-020-0455-y

Radoslaw Panczak, Jonathan Corcoran + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0455-y

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Abstract

The estimation of temporary populations is a well-established field, but despite growing interest they are yet to form part of the standard suite of official population statistics. This systematic review seeks to review the empirical literature on temporary population estimation and identify the contemporary “state of the art”. We identify a total of 96 studies that attempt to estimate or describe a method of estimation. Our findings reveal strong growth in the number of studies in recent decades that in part has been driven by the rise in both the type and availability of new sources of information, including mobile phone data. What emerges from this systematic review is the lack of any “gold standard” data source or methodology for temporary population estimation. The review points to a number of important challenges that remain for estimating temporary populations, both conceptually and practically. What remains is the need for clear definitions along with identification of appropriate data and methods that are able to robustly capture and measure the diverse array of spatial behaviours that drive temporary population dynamics. To our knowledge, this is the first review on this topic that brings together literature from various disciplines and collates methods used for estimation.

Highlights

Conventional population estimates capture a population at a single point in time
What emerges from this systematic review is the lack of any “gold standard” data source for temporary population estimation
This study sought to systematically review the empirical literature on temporary population estimation to identify the contemporary state of the art

Summary

Introduction

Conventional population estimates capture a population at a single point in time. In doing so, such estimates ignore the short-term dynamism of populations that are caused by temporary population mobility, a territorial movement that does not result in a permanent change of usual residence (Bell and Ward, 2000). Scholarship concerned with developing a conceptual basis for temporary population estimates is longstanding with early work first appearing in the United States in the 1950s (Foley, 1954; Schmitt, 1956). This early work proposed building on approaches previously used for the estimation of resident populations to generate temporary population estimates. Schmitt (1956) was the first to recognise the value of symptomatic data as a source for such estimates Several decades later, it was Smith (1987, 1989) that proposed a set of metrics (visitor-days and visitor-years) to capture measures of temporary populations as well as highlighting the difficulty of validating temporary population estimates. He drew attention to four dimensions of temporary mobility (movement intensity, duration, seasonality, and spatial impact), which he argued drive change in the stock of temporary visitors at both the origin and at the destination

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