Abstract

In a globalized world, the socio-ecological context is critical to assessing how humans value nature, and tourist visitors have a complex series of demands of socio-ecological concern. How visitor appreciate the different nature components can be the key to improve the management and conservation planning of natural and cultural socio-ecological values. The objective was to analyze how visitors valued a socio-ecological system through the use of social media data. In doing so, we gathered YouTube´s videos of Ushuaia city and its surroundings forested landscapes (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina) posted between 2010 and 2020. We use the screen time (seconds) in videos on YouTube to compare the value of visitors on the biophysical, cultural and biodiversity attributes in such socio-ecological system. Each of the visitors registered differently the same attribute (i.e., from many perspectives). So, an assessment was caused by the appreciation in time that was on an attribute, which was calculated through the focus and scale with which it was observed. Based on our analyses, we found a diversity of attributes with valuation data per visitor (e.g., mountain, forest, signposts, forb, fauna, among others). These data of screen time allocated for each attribute, plus descriptive and multivariate analyzes, provided as a result unusual evaluations of the analyzed variables (e.g., biophysical, cultural, or biodiversity) among the visitors from different regions of the world. These results indicated that visitors valued biophysical and cultural attributes more than the local biodiversity. These outputs highlight the need to explore and implement alternative actions for the assessment of the socio-ecological values to achieve the objectives of sustainable management, and it include socio-ecological attributes in the study area as key indicators to create new tools and solutions for conservation issues.