Digital transition of outdoor sports and tourism in moutain area

Details

Full Title
FS 3.187: Digital transition of outdoor sports and tourism in moutain area : transformation of practices in recreational activities, research and management
Scheduled
Talks:
2025-09-15, 16:00 - 17:30 (LT), SOWI – UR 3
Convener
Robin Lesné
Co-Conveners
François Hugues, Marc Langenbach, Pascal Mao,
Assigned to Synthesis Workshop
---
Thematic Focus
Adaptation, Culture, Policy, Socio-Ecology, Tourism
Keywords
digital transition, outdoor sports, management, tourism

Description

As our societies enter the digital age, the daily lives of residents, decision-makers and socio-economic stakeholders are being transformed. Digital tools, and the data produced by their use, accompany us in many of our activities. Since the 2000s, research has studied the effects of the growing power of digital technology in transforming our lifestyles (travel and mobility, media and communication, production and consumption patterns or leisure). This digitalisation also concerns outdoor sports practices, and associated tourism, in mountain areas. It facilitates the dissemination of information both to prepare an outing (where, conditions and accessibility) and to help with the practice live (guiding and securing). In parallel, mountains are at the forefront of areas targeted by outdoor sports, questioning the impacts of such practices on the sensitive and rare natural environments of high mountains. Inadequate behaviors or a growing anthropic pressure might threaten these fragile ecosystems, while the rising visitor number might support tourism diversification and draw transitional perspectives.

The aim of this session is therefore to discuss two main issues.

Firstly, it will discuss the transformations linked to digital technology in mountain recreational uses and practices, and document the social, cultural, energy, legal, and regulatory issues involved (concentration on specific sites, promotion on social networks, buzz, etc.).
Secondly, it will welcome work on the integration of these uses and the data they produce (specifically digital footprints) in academic work and in mountain area management models (to which point? and in which way?).

Registered Abstracts

ID: 3.11955

Significance and limits of VGI in the study and understanding of the logics of visits of natural areas: Strava and Outdoorvision data on Grenoble Alpes Métropole and the Drôme department (France)

Robin Lesné
Rohaut, Julien; François, Hugues; Langenbach, Marc; Mao, Pascal; Robinet, Nicolas

Abstract/Description

This paper reports on studies (2023-2025) using VGI data of outdoor sports from Strava, a private platform, and Outdoorvision, a French Ministry of Sports platform aggregating data from multiple platforms. We studied nine natural areas in the Drôme department and the Grenoble Alpes Métropole area (France). Although platforms have built-in protocols for removing outliers, they still retain inconsistent records. Then, we address the technical and methodological issues involved in data acquisition, processing, and cleaning. The socio-demographic analysis reveals trends concerning the age and gender of the people who practice outdoor sports producing VGI. Highlighting that certain profiles are more represented in terms of number of people than in terms of intensity of use, we show the methodological interest of distinguishing between user accounts and the distances covered by each user. The temporal analysis reveals an overall seasonal pattern. More precisely, we distinguish between rural natural areas, where activities tend to be spread out over the day, and peri-urban natural areas, where activities take place much more evenly throughout the year, but are concentrated on everyday leisure activities temporalities. The spatial diffusion analysis of visits shows that peri-urban natural areas have higher visitor densities than rural natural areas, but with less concentration of flows, varying much more according to the type of day. The last analysis aims to establish (non-)relationships between meteorological patterns and visits. In peri-urban natural areas, it seems that there is no relation. As for rural natural areas, temperatures seem positively correlated. This result is logical considering the seasonal nature of outdoor sports, but this correlation is stronger on weekend days, which indicates an effect of temperature beyond that of seasonality. Finally, we relativize our results considering the representativeness of our data. Comparing Strava and Outdoorvision data with local eco-counters, we show that VGI of outdoor sports represents a small proportion of practices and that this representativeness is quite variable from one place and time to another. Technical constraints and the varying propensities to use connected tools during practice could explain it, without it being possible to measure the effect of each of these two logics.

ID: 3.13004

Uncovering Risk Perception in Avalanche Terrain: A Semantic Analysis of User-Generated Ski Tour Reports

Leonie Schäfer
Purves, Ross Stuart; Techel, Frank

Abstract/Description

Winter sport activities taking place in unsecured mountainous terrain have gained in popularity in recent decades, but accident statistics show that these activities come with inherent dangers. Backcountry skiers in particular – who travel on unsecured slopes – voluntarily expose themselves to the risk of serious injury or death if they are caught by an avalanche. On average, 23 people die in avalanches each winter in Switzerland, and most victims trigger the avalanche themselves, highlighting the critical role of human factors in avalanche accidents. While literature shows the importance of heuristic-based decision-making in uncertain situations, it can lead to unconscious biases and systematic errors. These biases and errors are believed to be complicit in avalanche accidents, yet they are difficult to quantify or measure. We know remarkably little about the decision-making of those who are not involved in accidents. Spatially explicit user-generated content is a popular data source for studying humans in nature. Typical analysis of such data concentrates on the use of only two dimensions – space and time – exploring where and when backcountry skiers are in avalanche terrain. However, these data often also contain rich semantic data – for example in the form of textual descriptions of tours – offering valuable insights into perceptions of nature and the environment. Previous studies have shown that accident frequency varies significantly across time and space but does not always align with the baseline usage frequency. This suggests that decision making heuristics, which are shaped by perception of the current conditions and the environment, may be more or less robust according to the changing nature of avalanche problems. Understanding conditions under which decision-making heuristics are less robust therefore holds the potential to better understand behaviour in avalanche terrain and eventually mitigate avalanche accidents. Using a geo-referenced text corpus of more than 28’000 ski tour reports written by backcountry skiers since 2013 and published on a Swiss mountaineering website, we demonstrate how semantic user-generated content can be leveraged to study perception of risk and the environment in uncertain and risky conditions – and how these perceptions relate to avalanche hazard and accidents.

ID: 3.13147

Intersecting outdoor-app mobility data, automatic counters and field observations for visitor monitoring – case study of the Nordkette, Innsbruck, Austria

Karolina Taczanowska
Trap, Simon; Fornwagner, Helena; Balafoutas, Loukas; Messner, David; Eggert, Charlotte

Abstract/Description

In the contemporary era of digital society, the domain of outdoor recreation and tourism is undergoing significant transformation. With the rapid advancement of technology, such as mobile applications and geolocation services, the ways in which individuals engage with outdoor activities and travel experiences are evolving rapidly. Visitors’ digital traces can be used for visitor monitoring and support evidence-based management and planning decissions. The aim of this work is to validate outdoor-app data (STRAVA) against field measurements (Eco-Counter) and observations. Our study is based upon empirical data collected in the Nordkette region, Innsbruck, Austria between Nov 2023 – December 2024. High correlation between STRAVA data and field measurements was confirmed in case of cycling (MTB) and walking / running activities. However, more digital traces of bikers in comparison to hikers / joggers were avaliable at STRAVA Metro plattform. To conclude, visitor monitoring and management in the digital society era require a paradigm shift. This entails a comprehensive grasp and openness towards the potential benefits, while also being aware of the limitations inherent in digitalization processes. Validation studies and desclosing potential biases in digital datasets are highly relevant to support informed decission making within outdoor recreation and tourism domain.