Abstract
Data obtained through Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) have gradually been used to monitor and support planning mainly in urban contexts. Regarding recreational activities in peri-urban green and natural areas, VGI has been used to map, measure use intensity, profile users, and evaluate their preferences and motivations. Given their extensive use, it is now worthwhile to assess the value of VGI data to (1) compare recreational uses, profile users and map recreational activities in different contexts (metropolitan vs. rural areas), and (2) evaluate outdoor and adventure tourist products such as Grand Routes (GR). Data from former GPSies (AllTrails nowadays), one of the most popular web-share services, were used to assess recreational uses in Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA) and southwest Portugal (SWPT). A set of 22,031 tracks of “on foot” and “on wheels” activities, submitted by 3297 national and foreign users, covering 12 years, was analysed within a GIS modelling environment. Results indicate that, although there are many more submissions in the LMA, the influence of foreigners in the SWPT is higher (11% vs. 19%). The existing GR in SWPT concentrates the foreign use for hiking (71% of foreign vs. 28% of national users), demonstrating its attractiveness. For the favourite activity in both areas—Mountain biking—results show a higher spatial dispersion, yet part of the activity in SWPT still conforms to the GR (16% of foreign and 20% of national use). This study proves other applications for VGI, showing its usefulness for assessing recreational uses in both metropolitan and rural areas. Spatial knowledge about recreational uses is a valuable tool to evaluate and monitor such activities, and to know what users like to do, and where, and is also useful information when designing recreational products considering their tourist potential, thus adding value to these offers.
Highlights
In recent decades, outdoor recreation and leisure activities have dramatically increased in green and natural areas, contributing to people’s quality of life, sense of place, and physical wellbeing [1,2,3,4,5]
Two study areas were selected to evaluate the utility of Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) from recreational activities— the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), and the Southwest region of Portugal, which includes the Atlantic coastline of Alentejo and the Costa Vicentina in Algarve (SWPT) and the Grand Route Rota Vicentina (Figure 1)
This study aimed to test the potential of VGI data regarding recreational activities in urban and rural areas and evaluate the attractiveness of outdoor and adventure offers such as Grand Routes
Summary
Outdoor recreation and leisure activities have dramatically increased in green and natural areas, contributing to people’s quality of life, sense of place, and physical wellbeing [1,2,3,4,5]. VGI is closely connected with the availability of GPS enabled mobile devices and mobile data, at a relatively low cost, which allows people to interact directly and immediately with large communities that share common interests, namely through social media and web-share services. Thanks to these technological advances, mapping people’s behaviour during leisure time is easier, making it possible to identify patterns of different activities across geographical and time dimensions
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