Geocaching data as an indicator for recreational ecosystem services in urban areas: Exploring spatial gradients, preferences and motivations

Outdoor recreation as a cultural ecosystem service offers an important opportunity for many people to experience directly the benefits that ecosystems provide, particularly in urban areas. The recent emergence of social media and other sources of 'big data' creates exciting alternative possibilities for assessing how people use nature for recreational purposes. In this study, we focus on 'geocaching', a worldwide outdoor game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to hide and seek containers called 'geocaches.' We use the city of Leipzig (Germany) as a case study and focus on nature-related geocaches to explore short-term recreation as a cultural ecosystem service. We use georeferenced localities of geocaches and their visit rates as quantitative measures and combine them with a content analysis, as well as with quantitative results of an online survey. Using this data, we distinguish between revealed and stated preferences. We found that the density of geocaches was highest close to the city centre and that geocaching is indeed a type of local recreation and an urban ecosystem service, as green areas and experiences in nature are important for this activity. Stated and revealed preferences, however, often did not match for the different types of geocaches that we identified. While geocachers may have quite different motivations, the activity appears to be mostly done by young, well-educated people according to our surveys. In summary, geocaching data offer exciting opportunities to explore spatial gradients, as well as preferences and motivations regarding short-term recreation.