Loved to Death? Social Media and Rising Visitation to National Parks, with Casey Wichman

Notable Quotes

• Social media posts advertise national parks: “Imagine I go backpacking in the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park … and then I post photos of mossy trees, rivers, and mountains on Instagram … My followers see that, and they might engage with that media … Maybe next time when you’re in the Pacific Northwest, you decide to go visit Olympic National Park, because in essence, I’ve influenced you to go. That’s how I’m thinking about this relationship between social media and national park visitation: it’s a form of persuasive advertising for recreation decisions.” (10:26)
• Individuals on social media have more influence than official accounts: “It doesn’t seem like the official National Park Service accounts are what’s driving these changes in visitation. It’s more general exposure. The number of posts that you and I are posting about individual parks, particularly posts with media attached, which matters more for Twitter, seem to be more influential for increasing visitation.” (18:20)
• Pros and cons of increased visitation: “There are undoubtedly some serious consequences with respect to overcrowding, but at the same time, I think we don’t appreciate the benefits that this suggests, as well. Specifically, more visitors to parks means that those parks are getting additional revenue from entrance fees. Those visitors are booking hotels, buying souvenirs, and booking guided trips. All of these things can help support local economies.” (21:44)

Top of the Stack

• “Social Media Influences National Park Visitation” by Casey Wichman
• “A New Study Finds Crowds at National Parks May Be Due to Social Media” by Wes Siler in Outside magazine
• “Do National Monuments Help or Hinder Local Economies?, with Margaret Walls” episode of the Resources Radio podcast
• Outside magazine
• Mountain Gazette
• The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen

The Full Transcript

Margaret Walls: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future. I'm your host, Margaret Walls.

My guest today is Casey Wichman. Casey is an associate professor in the school of economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Resources for the Future University Fellow. Casey's research spans a number of different topics in environmental economics, including work on drinking water; some energy work; research on climate impacts, such as extreme heat; outdoor recreation; and the topic we're going to talk about today, national parks—one of my favorite topics.

I invited Casey to join us to talk about his new publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences entitled “Social Media Influences National Park Visitation.” The paper looks at how posts and photos on social media sites, such as Instagram, affect visitation to national parks and what the implications of that might be for some of the challenges that the parks are facing, like overcrowding and management of park resources. If you're a national-park lover like me, or an Instagram user like me, please stay with us.

Hello, Casey. Welcome to Resources Radio. Thanks for coming on the show.

Casey Wichman: Hi, Margaret. Thanks for having me.

Margaret Walls: You've been on Resources Radio before, but I'm going to ask you this question we probably already asked you before, and that's to tell us a little bit about how you got into environmental economics and how you gravitated toward this particular topic we're going to talk about today.

Casey Wichman: Growing up, I was always outside building tree houses, riding bikes, snowboarding, playing in the woods—all that stuff. I always had this connection to the outdoors that I probably took for granted at the time. Then, I went to college in Ithaca, New York. Initially, I was an English major. Mainly, I didn't really know what I wanted to do; I thought I wanted to be a writer or a professor or something like that, but I didn't actually know anything about those jobs. The only professor I knew about was Indiana Jones, and it seemed like he had a pretty cool gig. Somewhere along the way I realized I cared about the environment. At the time, climate change was becoming more of a mainstream issue, so I decided I wanted to pivot my career to focus on environmental issues.

Around the same time, I ended up taking a microeconomics course as a requirement and things started to click. I thought econ felt a lot like formalization of common sense. I started taking more courses and realized that there's a whole field of economics related to studying the environment. That spoke to me more than alternative careers in environmental advocacy.

I graduated college in 2009, and I wasn't exactly itching to apply for jobs in that job market, so I applied to grad school. After a somewhat meandering path, I ended up here talking to you. I like to joke that, initially, I went to college to become an English major, and now I am a writer; I just write econ papers for economics journals. Take that, English faculty.

Margaret Walls: I was going to say more about that. I knew you were an English major, and I think that has served you well. You're a good writer, so that's good.

Casey Wichman: Thanks. I can give you a little bit of background on how I came to this project specifically, because it's a little outside my usual scope of research. I generally like working on questions that try to understand how people make decisions in their everyday lives that are either affected by or affect the environment. This is couched within that general theme, but this project is unique, because I can recall the exact moment where I hatched the idea to pursue this study.

If you can think back to early on in the pandemic, about June 2020, we were all stuck inside going stir-crazy. I was especially locked down, because my partner and I had our son just a couple weeks after the pandemic started, so we were stuck at home.

I was scrolling through Instagram and Twitter. I took a break from that and picked up an Outside magazine article focused on this issue of how much social media influenced overcrowding at outdoor recreation sites. I had known about this issue and seen a lot of anecdotal evidence about this issue, but at that moment, my research brain kicked on, and I thought to myself, "I bet I could answer that question." I started gathering as much data as I could. I had recently learned how to scrape social media data for a different project, so that's really how this project came about.

Margaret Walls: We were all stuck inside looking at pictures of parks and not going to them, I guess. That's cool, Casey.

Why don't we back up and talk a little bit about national parks. Can you give our listeners some background on the national park system in the United States and just provide a few facts? Set the stage for your study. Can you tell us how many parks there are? How are parks managed in general? What are the trends over the years of visitation and things like that? Do you mind answering those questions?

Casey Wichman: No, not at all. The National Park Service manages over 400 different sites in the United States, and those include everything from national monuments, national historic sites, national battlefields, national rivers, and so forth. I think what probably comes to mind to a lot of us when we think about national parks are the iconic places like Yellowstone, Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon. Those are actual national parks, and there are currently 63 of those.

The National Park Service itself is housed within the US Department of the Interior. It was created in 1916 by Woodrow Wilson, and its mission is to preserve unique natural resources and make them available for enjoyment by the public, which makes them some of the world's most iconic public goods. I think the mission is interesting, because it's different from other federal land management agencies like the US Forest Service or the US Bureau of Land Management, which are focused more on conservation rather than preservation. It might not sound like an important distinction, but there's a tension in environmental economics, where the distinction is that conservation allows for management of natural resources for productive uses, like logging timber or letting cattle graze, whereas preservation really is meant to preserve those landscapes and habitats in their pristine state.

Two of the major issues with national parks over the last few decades is that they're underfunded and overcrowded. The National Park Service has a deferred maintenance backlog of over $23 billion last time I checked. This is coupled with a pretty dramatic increase in visitation in recent years. The statistics that I pulled up suggest that in 2010, the National Park Service had about 280 million recreational visitors per year. By 2019, just 10 years later, that increased to nearly 330 million. That's a pretty big increase of about 17 percent in a decade.

Margaret Walls: That's a great background. Tell us a little bit more about what you set out to look at and why? I think you've told us a little bit about why, but expound on that a little bit.

Casey Wichman: Sure. The study asks a pretty simple question, which focuses on those two issues that the National Park Service is struggling with. First, was the advent of social media responsible, or at least partially responsible, for the huge uptick in visitation at National Parks? Second, to what extent does that increase in visitors lead to increases in revenue that can be helpful for the parks?

More specifically, I am focusing on those 60 or so iconic national parks. I went out and gathered as much information as possible about their exposure on social media, particularly on the social media platforms Twitter and Instagram, both from the official National Park service accounts, as well as social media posts from generic users like you and me. I use that data to construct an index of social media exposure and then relate that exposure index to changes in visitation at these parks between 2000 and 2019.

We can go into the weeds in a little bit, but the headline result I found is that almost all of the uptick in visitation at national parks was concentrated at parks in the upper half of that social media–exposure index, resulting in about 16 to 22 percent increases in visitation relative to parks in the lower half of that exposure distribution. Those less-exposed parks saw effectively no change or even decreases in visitation.

The way I think about this main result is the following. Imagine I go backpacking in the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park—which I did back in 2019—and then I post photos of mossy trees, rivers, and mountains on Instagram—which I also did back in 2019. My followers see that, and they might engage with that media like you did, Margaret, back in 2019. I have a direct quote from you on a post about my visit to Olympic National Park, which is "so beautiful." Maybe next time when you're in the Pacific Northwest, you decide to go visit Olympic National Park, because in essence, I've influenced you to go. That's how I'm thinking about this relationship between social media and national park visitation: it's a form of persuasive advertising for recreation decisions.

Margaret Walls: Let's talk about cause and effect a little bit, because that anecdote you just told highlights this issue. This is something economists always struggle with and are careful about in our studies. You needed to make sure, Casey, that you were measuring how social media exposure affected park visitation and not the reverse—how visitation affects the amount of social media there is. Presumably, parks like Olympic and some especially iconic places like Zion and Yosemite are going to be photographed more and talked about more on social media. You wanted to identify more how that exposure on social media affected subsequent visitation. Talk a little bit about how you address that particular challenge in doing this analysis.

Casey Wichman: You're absolutely right. This is the central challenge of any study like this. I'm trying to measure the effect of social media on visitation, but many people post on social media while they're visiting the parks. That would essentially mean that social media exposure might reflect visitation.

There's other concerns about things that might be changing at the same time that could also lead to increases in visitation. The big one in this time period is that the National Park Service’s 100th birthday happened in 2016, which is right after Instagram took off. I approach those concerns in a few different ways. The first thing I'll note is that there are some popular parks with relatively low social media exposure. Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio is one of those types of parks; it gets a lot of visitors, but it's not very popular online. Then, there are some unpopular parks with relatively high social media exposure, like Denali National Park. It's hard to get up to Alaska, but its social media exposure is actually pretty high. This gives me some confidence that the exposure metric I'm using is not simply picking up visitation trends; it's capturing social media exposure explicitly.

Secondly, I won't go into the complicated details, but I use an econometric approach that allows me to predict social media exposure using a park's online popularity before social media actually came online. Particularly, I use Google search intensity to see how many people are searching for parks online in the pre-social media era to disentangle the effects between visitation and exposure.

I also add a supplementary analysis that throws out the exposure index completely and only looks at a time-varying measure of exposure, which is the number of tweets and characteristics about those tweets that are focused on a specific park in the preceding year for that park. So, the exposure wouldn't be reflected in contemporaneous changes in visitation, because it's measured previously.

I do a lot of additional tests by dropping certain time periods or certain parks like the “crown jewel” parks, to make sure that the results are not simply driven by a few outlying parks or the National Park Centennial. Across all those strategies, the results are consistent. None of the approaches are fully bulletproof, but they all paint the same picture and leave me fairly confident about the direction of causality. It's hard to come up with an alternative story that would lead to increases in visitation at those particular parks that I'm studying.

Margaret Walls: Pretty believable findings. You talked about a few things that I want to follow up on. You said a minute ago that your high-level results are 16 to 22 percent. You said there is higher visitation at the parks with more social media exposure than ones with less. I want to ask a follow-up question about that. That's the basic finding, but you looked at heterogeneous effects by types of park. You looked at, I noticed, the Utah parks on their own—the Mighty Five—and the crown jewel parks on their own versus others. Give us a sense of some of those heterogeneity results that you got.

Casey Wichman: You got the headline result clear. I was curious to know what characteristics of parks and what characteristics of social media exposure really mattered for increasing visitation. Some of the biggest increases were concentrated in parks in both Alaska and Utah. Those are very different types of parks. Alaska is harder to get to, but again, I'm focusing on percent changes. These are small nominal increases in visitation, but very big percentage increases in visitation in the parks in Alaska.

Some of the parks in Utah are suffering from serious overcrowding issues. In Zion National Park, they have shuttle service into the park, because there's not enough parking for people who want to visit these parks. Those are the parks that see some of the biggest increases, but it's not always the really popular parks; it is also a lot of parks that are close to population centers.

Joshua Tree is a good example that I like to use, because it's pretty close to Los Angeles. You can take a weekend trip there pretty easily, and it has a very photogenic landscape with crazy Dr. Seuss trees and a Martian landscape of rocks. It’s not too difficult to get to and not too difficult to engage with that landscape. So, it ends up being a type of park that is a really good match with Instagram. That park specifically has seen pretty dramatic increases in visitation, which tells most of the story that is embedded in the results.

There's also a few interesting things about the type of media that matters. One thing I found was that it doesn't seem like the official National Park Service accounts are what's driving these changes in visitation. It's more general exposure. The number of posts that you and I are posting about individual parks, particularly posts with media attached, which matters more for Twitter, seem to be more influential for increasing visitation.

Margaret Walls: Interesting. I'll go off on a little segue here, Casey. We had Lynne Lewis on to talk about the bears in Katmai National Park. I don't know if you had a chance to listen to that Resources Radio episode?

Casey Wichman: I did, yeah.

Margaret Walls: We talked about the Fat Bear Week competition and the cams. This is a different type of thing, but related to what you're looking at too, which is more exposure for remote viewers and remote visitors. She talked a lot about the different challenges with managing interactions with the wildlife, the overcrowding issues, and so forth. I want to turn to that with respect to your study. What are the implications of your findings for some of these overcrowding and congestion problems that certain parks are seeing? What do you think about that based on what you found?

Casey Wichman: It's a great question. I really enjoy Lynne's work focusing on charismatic species, and thinking about Fat Bear Week is always fun. One interesting anecdote is that, surprisingly, I don't see Katmai National Park having much of an increase in visitation, but it's also one of the most remote parks. You can only get there by boat plane, if I understand correctly. It takes a particular type of visitor to want to go out and share a walkway with the grizzly bears that are going to feed on salmon. What you might see is that people are substituting in-person visits for online enjoyment. That's a nice way of linking the two studies.

To your specific question about overcrowding, this is obviously an issue. It causes wear and tear on infrastructure, traffic congestion, littering, degradation of hiking trails, and visitors putting themselves and wildlife at risk. I know, when I go to a national park, I want to enjoy the scenery and wildlife and solitude. Now, I know that I should try to avoid certain areas or maybe go further off the beaten path to have that experience.

A lot of the reaction that I've seen about social media and national parks—partially in reaction to my study, but in general, as well—is very negative. I think we love being mad about things. There are undoubtedly some serious consequences with respect to overcrowding, but at the same time, I think we don't appreciate the benefits that this suggests, as well. Specifically, more visitors to parks means that those parks are getting additional revenue from entrance fees. Those visitors are booking hotels, buying souvenirs, and booking guided trips. All of these things can help support local economies, which speaks to some of your work, Margaret, on national monuments.

We also spend a lot of time on our phones. Social media is certainly affecting our mental health, but also this study suggests that social media might provide enough of a nudge to get us off of our butts and into the outdoors to enjoy some of these really special places. I would speculate that there are a lot more people who leave their visit to a national park with a greater appreciation for our natural resources and the benefits of conservation than there are poorly behaved visitors who are causing environmental harm. There's pros and cons here, certainly. It's going beyond my study, but I tend to come down on the side that this is probably a net benefit. These benefits are probably outweighing the costs, but maybe that's a focus for a follow-up study.

Margaret Walls: There is other work on this. It's a challenge for the National Park Service, but I agree with you. I'm glad you made the point that if we have high visitation to parks, that's an indication that they have high value to the American public.

Casey Wichman: Exactly.

Margaret Walls: Well, Casey, I'm super excited about this study and I'm glad we were able to have you on to talk about it. You have been on Resources Radio, so you know where I'm going with my next question, and that's our Top of the Stack question. Do you have any favorite book, podcast, movie, or any kind of content lately that's caught your attention that you might want to recommend to our listeners?

Casey Wichman: Sure. I'm not sure if you remember how much free time you had when you had young kids, but my consumption of media, or at least my consumption of reading, is limited to about five pages before I fall asleep each day. But I do have two thoughts or recommendations. One comes back to the origin of this study, which is my longtime interest in outdoor magazines. Those typically allow me to adventure vicariously through others. I've been a longtime subscriber to Outside magazine. There’s an article that just featured this paper in Outside magazine, which is nice, because this was inspired by Outside magazine. It was nice to see that being reciprocated.

There's also this new magazine that I've been really into lately, which is an older magazine that's been reborn, called Mountain Gazette. It’s a large-format magazine with cool pictures and stories about the outdoors. I've been really into that, and with my subscription, they sent me a hat, so I've been wearing that hat a lot.

The second is a kid's book titled The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen. I like this book at least as much as my four-year-old does. It's a nice story about a duck and a mouse who get eaten by a wolf and take up residence in its stomach. They come to appreciate the security that it provides from the harsh realities of the wild. Then, a hunter tries to kill the wolf, and the mouse and the duck revolt to save the wolf, and then request to get re-eaten by the wolf. Then, having a mouse and a duck dance around in its stomach gives the wolf a stomach ache, and that's why they howl at the moon, which is a fantastic story if you have kids. I usually beg my son to let me read it to him. It emphasizes why it's important to study public land management issues in order to preserve habitat for some of these iconic wildlife.

Margaret Walls: Exactly. Those are two great recommendations. I'm familiar with Mountain Gazette, but I'll have to take another look.

Casey, time has flown. It's been a pleasure having you on Resources Radio to talk about one of my personal favorite topics, national parks, and your very cool new paper. I hope this isn't the last national parks paper you write, so I'm going to look forward to more from you. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show.

Casey Wichman: Thanks, Margaret. It's always a pleasure to geek out about national parks with you.

Margaret Walls: You've been listening to Resources Radio, a podcast from Resources for the Future, or RFF. If you have a minute, we'd really appreciate you leaving us a rating or a comment on your podcast platform of choice. Also, feel free to send us your suggestions for future episodes.

This podcast is made possible with the generous financial support of our listeners. You can help us continue producing these kinds of discussions on the topics that you care about by making a donation to Resources for the Future online at rff.org/donate.

RFF is an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, DC. Our mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. The views expressed on this podcast are solely those of the podcast guests and may differ from those of RFF experts, its officers, or its directors. RFF does not take positions on specific legislative proposals.

Resources Radio is produced by Elizabeth Wason, with music by Daniel Raimi. Join us next week for another episode.