Visitor flows to World Heritage Sites in the era of Instagram

Figures & data

Figure 1. Number of Instagram posts by kind.

Source: Instagram, accessed March 2020, and own calculations.

Figure 2. Average number of Instagram posts by site on the danger list.

Source: Instagram, accessed March 2020, and own calculations.

Figure 3. Average number of Instagram posts by country.

Notes: The left axis contains the ISO 2 country codes.

Source: Instagram, accessed March 2020, and own calculations.

Figure 4. Average number of Instagram posts by criteria.

Source: Instagram, accessed March 2020, and own calculations.

Table 1. Number of Instagram posts by type (top 5) (in 1000 s).

Historical cities		Cultural Landscape
Paris, Banks of the Seine	115400.0	Costiera Amalfitana	4398.3
Historic Areas of Istanbul	89809.4	The Climats, terroirs of Burgundy	3056.5
Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties	53417.9	The English Lake District	2642.5
Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg	29402.5	Cultural Landscape of Sintra	1774.9
Venice and its Lagoon	23950.7	Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew	576.3
Historical monuments		Industrial heritage and mining sites
Statue of Liberty	2019.6	Mines of Rammelsberg	131.7
Palace and Park of Versailles	1895.1	Saltaire	75.4
Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín, Granada	1543.3	Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex	43.8
Historic Monuments of Novgorod and Surro	913.3	Heritage of Mercury. Almadén and Idrija	38.4
Tower of London	619.4	Wieliczka and Bochnia Royal Salt Mines	24.8
Churches		Natural sites
Cathedral of Notre-Dame	3684.9	The Dolomites	4199.4
Vatican City	2382.6	Grand Canyon National Park	3905.6
Churches of the Pskov School of Architecture	1263.7	Yosemite National Park	2908.2
Cathedral of St Peter and Church of Our Lady in Trier	536.9	Golden Mountains of Altai	2234.1
Assisi, the Basilica of San Francesco	522.8	Yellowstone National Park	2169.4
Archaeological sites		Prehistoric Sites and caves
Acropolis, Athens	1213.1	Rock Carvings in Tanum	20.6
Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park	1104.8	Heart of Neolithic Orkney	13.2
Syracuse and the Rocky Necropolis of Pan	1101.3	Prehistoric Sites; Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley	8.6
Paphos	982.2	Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc	2.6
Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites	717.0	Madara Rider	0.5

Source: Instagram, accessed March 2020, and own calculations.

Figure 5. Relationship between the number of Instagram posts and years of inscription of the WHS.

Source: WHS database, Instagram, accessed March 2020, and own calculations.

Figure 6. Relationship between the number of Instagram posts and size by type.

Source: UNESCO World Heritage Site database and Instagram.

Figure 7. Relationship between the number of Instagram posts and size.

Notes: The predicted logarithm of Instagram posts is calculated using the delta method using the estimates for size and size squared in specification (i) shown in Table 3.

Source: Instagram, accessed March 2020, and own calculations.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics.

	Mean	Std. Dev.	Min	Max
Ln Instagram posts	9.9	3.3	1.1	18.6
Spatial lag of ln Instagram posts (exponential decay function)	10.0	3.1	2.0	18.6
Spatial lag of ln Instagram posts (power functional type)	10.1	3.2	1.9	18.6
Ln area, hectares	5.3	4.0	−4.9	18.0
Age of inscription of WHS (years)	22.8	11.2	1.0	42.0
Dummy variables:	Per cent		Per cent
Location (ISO two-digit country code)
AT	1.3	Assignment to danger list	2.9
BE	1.9	Type:
BG	1.7	Historical city	19.8
CA	3.4	Historical monument	9.1
CH	1.5	Church or related site	17.5
CZ	2.5	Archaeological site	12.0
DE	7.4	Cultural landscape	9.0
DK	1.7	Industrial heritage	5.3
ES	8.0	Prehistoric site	2.7
FR	7.8	Natural WHS	14.9
UK	5.9	Other WHS	9.7
GR	3.4	Criteria:
HR	1.3	Criteria cultural WHS 2	46.3
HU	1.1	Criteria cultural WHS 6	19.0
IL	1.7
IT	9.3
NL	1.7
NO	1.3
PL	2.5
PT	3.0
RO	1.3
RU	4.8
SE	2.5
TR	3.4
US	4.2
Transboundary	4.6
Other countries	10.5

Source: World heritage site database. Instagram, own calculations (accessed March 2020).

Table 3. Determinants of the number of Instagram posts of World Heritage Sites.

	(i)			(ii)			(iii)			(iv)
	Robust regression			Robust regression			OLS			Median regression
	coeff.		t-stat	coeff.		t-stat	coeff.		t-stat	coeff.		t-stat
Spatial lag of Ln Instagram posts	0.04		0.89
Ln area, hectares	0.28	***	3.46	0.28	***	3.49	0.25	***	3.52	0.31	***	3.27
Ln hectares squared	−0.01	*	−1.93	−0.01	*	−1.93	−0.01	**	−2.12	−0.02	**	−2.40
Age of inscription of WHS	0.05	***	4.36	0.05	***	4.44	0.05	***	4.29	0.05	***	3.45
Assignment to danger list	1.62	**	2.32	1.66	**	2.37	1.36	*	1.65	1.83	**	2.17
Type (ref cat.: other)
Historical city	3.76	***	7.91	3.71	***	7.79	3.59	***	7.24	4.22	***	7.35
Historical monument	0.91	*	1.70	0.93	*	1.73	0.69		1.26	1.19	*	1.84
Church or related site	−0.07		−0.14	−0.13		−0.26	−0.32		−0.61	0.14		0.23
Archaeological site	−0.50		−0.93	−0.51		−0.95	−0.68		−1.14	−0.04		−0.06
Cultural landscape	0.54		0.96	0.50		0.89	0.45		0.76	1.46	**	2.16
Industrial heritage	−1.71	***	−2.77	−1.72	***	−2.78	−1.72	***	−2.97	−1.60	**	−2.14
Prehistoric site	−2.59	***	−3.26	−2.65	***	−3.32	−2.71	***	−3.16	−1.98	**	−2.06
Natural WHS	0.73		1.21	0.59		0.98	0.46		0.68	1.59	**	2.20
Criteria cultural WHS 2	0.70	***	2.69	0.71	***	2.74	0.72	***	2.85	0.93	***	2.94
Criteria cultural WHS 6	0.84	***	2.82	0.85	***	2.84	0.84	***	2.66	0.94	***	2.60
Country dummies (ISO 2 digit)
AT (other)	1.23		1.19	1.35		1.31	1.48	**	2.01	1.32		1.07
BE	0.04		0.04	−0.05		−0.06	−0.04		−0.05	0.39		0.36
BG	−1.79	*	−1.91	−1.84	**	−1.96	−1.85	**	−2.29	−1.54		−1.37
CA	−1.38	*	−1.93	−1.40	*	−1.95	−1.27	*	−1.84	−1.51	*	−1.75
CH	−0.84		−0.88	−0.79		−0.82	−0.64		−0.67	−1.10		−0.94
CZ	−0.20		−0.25	−0.22		−0.28	−0.33		−0.43	0.56		0.58
DE	0.24		0.44	0.23		0.43	0.23		0.44	0.47		0.72
DK	0.37		0.40	0.31		0.34	0.04		0.04	0.95		0.85
ES	0.37		0.70	0.39		0.74	0.41		0.83	0.42		0.67
FR	1.35	**	2.50	1.41	***	2.62	1.29	**	2.22	1.61	**	2.48
UK	1.30	**	2.16	1.19	**	2.01	0.92		1.37	1.47	**	2.07
GR	0.61		0.84	0.58		0.80	0.77		1.18	0.29		0.33
HR	−0.68		−0.66	−0.66		−0.64	−0.56		−0.79	−0.52		−0.42
HU	0.40		0.36	0.46		0.42	0.50		0.60	0.53		0.40
IL	0.00		−0.01	−0.06		−0.07	0.01		0.01	0.48		0.43
IT	1.66	***	3.17	1.76	***	3.44	1.75	***	3.34	1.78	***	2.89
NL	0.01		0.01	−0.06		−0.07	−0.06		−0.08	−0.21		−0.18
NO	−0.91		−0.88	−0.94		−0.91	−0.67		−0.74	−1.14		−0.91
PL	0.87		1.10	0.91		1.16	0.89		1.27	1.33		1.39
PT	0.91		1.26	0.97		1.34	1.01	*	1.73	1.64	*	1.88
RO	−1.07		−1.04	−1.14		−1.11	−1.06		−1.19	−0.82		−0.67
RU	2.10	***	3.21	2.21	***	3.39	2.02	***	2.88	2.27	***	2.89
SE	−0.75		−0.94	−0.80		−1.00	−0.73		−0.97	−0.14		−0.15
TR	1.87	***	2.62	1.92	***	2.69	1.04		1.05	1.95	**	2.26
US	1.24	*	1.81	1.31	*	1.92	1.48	**	2.10	1.74	**	2.12
Transboundary	0.94		1.44	0.98		1.51	0.95		1.32	1.36	*	1.74
Constant	5.69	***	8.18	6.03	***	10.17	6.24	***	10.02	5.39	***	7.54
Average marginal effect of size	0.15	***	3.54	0.15	***	3.50	0.13	***	3.00	0.13	**	2.43
Number of observations	525			525			525			525
Adjusted R^2/Pseudo R^2							0.475			0.323

Notes: Asterisks ***, ** and * denote significance at the 1, 5 and 10 per cent levels. The dependent variable is the logarithm of the number of Instagram posts.