Purpose

The non-material benefits which people derive from ecosystems, cultural ecosystem services (CES), can be difficult to measure and quantify. This study aims to demonstrate the usefulness of social media analysis.

Design/methodology/approach

The widespread use of social media applications has provided a novel methodology for obtaining crowd-sourced data, which can reveal patterns in how social media users interact with urban greenspace and participate in place-making activities. This study explores how urban trees are represented in images tagged with the city of Bolzano, Italy, and uploaded over the course of a year to the image-sharing application Instagram.

Findings

A third of all the images contained some elements of green nature, with 3.1% of the images portraying urban trees as the main subject and 11% with urban trees as background features. Seasonal preferences for winter and summer scenes emerged. Accompanying text, in the form of hashtags and image descriptions, was mostly positive and showed how enthusiastically people describe urban nature. An assessment of the images in terms of CES revealed that beyond aesthetic factors and the inspiration to take photographs of nature, a wide range of CES are represented, reflecting the recognition of the benefits of urban trees by Instagrammers. The collection of images provided a unique snapshot of the city of Bolzano.

Practical implications

This reinforces the importance of urban trees within planning policy for providing sense of place, recreation and stress relief for residents and tourists.

Originality/value

The study builds on recent advances in social media research, focussing on the important field of urban CES.

中文翻译：

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#urbanforest：Instagram 镜头下的城市树木文化生态系统服务

目的

人们从生态系统、文化生态系统服务 (CES) 中获得的非物质利益可能难以衡量和量化。本研究旨在证明社交媒体分析的有用性。

设计/方法/方法

社交媒体应用程序的广泛使用为获取众包数据提供了一种新颖的方法，可以揭示社交媒体用户如何与城市绿地互动和参与场所营造活动的模式。这项研究探索了城市树木如何在带有意大利博尔扎诺市标签的图像中呈现，并在一年内上传到图像共享应用程序 Instagram。

发现

三分之一的图片包含一些绿色自然元素，其中 3.1% 的图片以城市树木为主体，11% 的图片以城市树木为背景。出现了对冬季和夏季场景的季节性偏好。以主题标签和图像描述的形式随附的文字大多是正面的，并表明人们对城市自然的描述是多么热情。根据 CES 对图像的评估显示，除了审美因素和拍摄自然照片的灵感外，CES 还代表了广泛的 CES，反映了 Instagram 用户对城市树木益处的认可。图像集提供了博尔扎诺市的独特快照。

实际影响

这加强了城市树木在规划政策中的重要性，为居民和游客提供场所感、娱乐和压力缓解。

原创性/价值

该研究以社交媒体研究的最新进展为基础，重点关注城市 CES 的重要领域。