Visitor experience with biodiversity in tropical rainforests: A global-scale assessment using social media data

Tourism in tropical rainforests can assist in their conservation by providing visitors with opportunities to interact with biodiversity and raising awareness toward rainforest conservation. However, it has been argued that most visitors visiting tropical rainforests prefer recreational activities rather than observing biodiversity, except for charismatic mammals and birds. As there is no systematic and global-scale study on visitor experiences with biodiversity in tropical rainforests, we assessed 25,000 Flickr photographs of 25 tropical rainforest-protected areas worldwide. Globally, we found that photographs of biodiversity (plants, animals, and fungi) were shared and liked more frequently than those of human activities. Among the biodiversity photographs, there were as many photographs of birds, arthropods, and plants as those of mammals. Our results indicated that visitors were interested in the non-charismatic biodiversity they encountered. Thus, providing more information on non-charismatic biodiversity will enrich visitor experiences and raise their awareness of biodiversity conservation. We also found several limitations using social media data for assessing experiences of visitors in tropical rainforests including user bias, limited geotagged data, and a lack of sufficient validation.