Determining preferences for ecosystem benefits in Great Lakes Areas of Concern from photographs posted to social media

Relative valuation of potentially affected ecosystem benefits can increase the legitimacy and social acceptance of ecosystem restoration projects. As an alternative or supplement to traditional methods of deriving beneficiary preference, we downloaded from social media and classified approximate to 21,000 photographs taken in two Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AOC), the St Louis River and the Milwaukee Estuary. Our motivating presumption was that the act of taking a photograph constitutes some measure of the photographer's individual preference for, or choice of, the depicted subject matter among myriad possible subject matter. Overall, 17% of photos downloaded from the photo-sharing sites Flickr, Instagram, and Panoramio depicted an ecosystem benefit of the AOC. Percent of photographs depicting a benefit and the photographs' subject matter varied between AOCs and among photo-sharing sites. Photos shared on Instagram were less user gender biased than other photo-sharing sites and depicted active recreation (e.g., trail use) more frequently than passive recreation (e.g., landscape viewing). Local users shared more photos depicting a benefit than non local users. The spatial distribution of photograph locations varied between photos depicting and not depicting a benefit, and identified areas within AOCs from which few photographs were shared. As a source of beneficiary preference information, we think Instagram has some advantages over the other photo-sharing sites. When combined with other information, spatially-explicit relative valuation derived from aggregate social preference can be translated into information and knowledge useful for Great Lakes restoration decision making. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of International Association for Great Lakes Research.