Evaluating the aesthetic value of cultural ecosystem services by mapping geo-tagged photographs from social media data on Panoramio and Flickr

Traditional approaches for evaluating aesthetic value rely on surveys or interviews. Social media provides a new type of crowdsourcing data to examine the relationships between aesthetic value and citizens' activities. The main goal of this paper was to evaluate aesthetic value in Nebraska by using citizen-reported geo-tagged photographs posted on two social media sites–Panoramio and Flickr. The study used the application programming interface from Panoramio and Flickr to obtain the latitude and longitude of the geo-tagged photographs, and then used ArcGIS spatial statistical tools to examine spatial patterns with areas of aesthetic value in Nebraska. The outcomes identified the clusters of pictures with the locations of ecosystem service provisioning areas of aesthetic value in Nebraska, identified new areas with aesthetic value, and drew comparisons with local and regional population distribution. This study provided an innovative approach to using crowdsourcing data to verify the value of ecosystem services.