The third multi-dimensional analysis concerns the investigation of two bordering places within the study area in order to analyze potential dissimilarities in the profile of users who visit these places. The investigated places are notably different in nature and sizes. As a matter of fact, the first one is the ‘Lido’, namely a seaside establishment that offers a number of different services to customers to spend the daily hours in the Poetto beach, as well as, a leisure night local / discotheque / bar that offers the opportunity to spend the night to its customers. On the other hand, the second investigated place is the bordering ‘free beach’, a little strip of beach without services that is usually lived by users to spend the day at the Poetto beach without the requirement to expend money to be visited.
For their inherent differences, the analysis aims at identifying differences both in terms of temporal patterns, users profiles and users provenance, relying upon the investigation of spatial, temporal and user dimension of Instagram SMGI. Immediately, an explorative analysis exposes the different degree of attractiveness offered by the two areas: the ‘Lido’ area comprises 2466 contributions, meanwhile the ‘free beach’ area presents exclusively 36 Instagram photos, denoting the importance played by customer services to the Instagram users for visiting and staying in a place. In addition, the small number of contributions in the ‘free beach’ may be explained due to the limited size of the area. Nevertheless, despite the volume difference in the two samples, the analysis is carried out to investigate further potential dissimilarities. The figure 66 shows the spatial limits of the two considered places, their contained contributions and the complementary Foursquare SMGI dataset.
Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI): opportunities for spatial planning and governance. 148
Figure 66. Identification of ‘Lido’ and ‘Free beach’ areas.
At this stage, the analysis deals with the investigation of differences in user profiles that visit the two different places exploiting the results of user profiling. As a matter of fact, any SMGI is produced by an user that was profiled in the previous step, disclosing the opportunity to investigate which users groups visit or prefer a certain area. The results show that the ‘Italian tourists’ or ‘Foreign tourists’ are absent in the ‘Free beach’ area, raising interesting questions about the advantages that may be offered by customer services for attracting the interest of this user group. The results of comparison between user profiles for the two areas are presented in Figure 67 and Table 40.
USER PROFILE Users in ‘Free beach’ area Users in ‘Lido’ area
Middle-class families 7 130
Young prosperous families 3 76
Elder working couples 2 51
Elder blue-collars 2 61
Young Blue-collars families 0 47
Blue-collars retired families 1 38
Middle-class singles 0 10
Tradesman families 0 19
Italian tourists 0 23
Foreign tourists 0 8
Young well-off families 0 5
Single white-collars 0 1
Young single farmers 0 1
Table 40. Comparison between the ‘Free beach’ and the ‘Lido’ area in terms of user profiles.
Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI): opportunities for spatial planning and governance. 149 Figure 67. Differences in users profiles between the ‘Free beach’ and the ‘Lido’ area.
After the conclusion of the comparison between the areas in terms of user profiles, the analysis concerns the investigation of difference in temporal patterns. The temporal analysis is conducted considering the SMGI monthly distribution and the daily trends, while the results are provided in Figure 68 and Figure 69, respectively.
Figure 68. Monthly distribution of SMGI in the ‘Free beach’ area.
Figure 69. Monthly distribution of SMGI in the ‘Lido’ area.
0
Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI): opportunities for spatial planning and governance. 150 The results of monthly temporal investigation expose the differences between the two considered areas.
Notwithstanding the differences in SMGI volume, the analysis stresses the presence of users during all the year in the ‘Lido’ area, denoting the multi-purpose nature of the place that offers a set of differenced services to meet the customers’ expectation during all the year. On the contrary, the ‘Free beach’ area is mainly lived only during the summer and presents several periods without SMGI contributions.
The same observed phenomenon is visible analyzing the daily temporal trends for the two areas, as shown in Figure 70 and Figure 71. Indeed, in spite of normal fluctuations in the trend, SMGI contributions are shared by users during all the day in the ‘Lido’ area. In particular, the high number of SMGI uploaded by users during the night hours denote the different services provided by the place to its customers, which may live the place both during day for the beach but also during night for the offered leisure activities.
Similarly to the monthly distribution, the ‘Free beach’ presents different periods without contributions, particularly during the night, highlight the lack of service in the area and the potential consequent absence of visitors.
Figure 70. Daily trend of SMGI in the ‘Free beach’ area.
Figure 71. Daily trend of SMGI in the ‘Free beach’ area.
0 1 2 3 4 5
0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4-5 5-6 6-7 7-8 8-9 9-10 10-11 11-12 12-13 13-14 14-15 15-16 16-17 17-18 18-19 19-20 20-21 21-22 22-23 23-24
'Free beach' area
SMGI number
0 50 100 150 200 250
0-1 1-2 2-3 3-4 4-5 5-6 6-7 7-8 8-9 9-10 10-11 11-12 12-13 13-14 14-15 15-16 16-17 17-18 18-19 19-20 20-21 21-22 22-23 23-24
'Lido' area
SMGI number
Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI): opportunities for spatial planning and governance. 151 A focused analysis of the temporal trends denote the minimum number of contributions for the ‘Lido’ area during the periods 07:00-08:00 AM and 08:00-09:00 AM, that may be due to the functional change in services offered in the area. Indeed, during these periods, the night services are just closed and the day services are starting to open.
Finally, the last analysis carried out on the two areas concerns the investigation of users’ provenance. In fact, the SMGI Analytics allowed the detection of users residential areas, allowing the study of their provenance. The aim of this analysis is to study if the presence of different customer services in the ‘Lido’
area attracts visitors from distant areas more than the ‘Free beach’ area, which does not offer any kind of customer service. The results of the spatial analysis on the users’ provenance are shown in Figure 72, denoting notable differences between the two studied areas.
Figure 72. Users provenance for the ‘Free beach’ and the ‘Lido’ area.
The obtained results show that the ‘Free beach’ area is visited exclusively by 15 users in the SMGI dataset, that are mainly residents in the Cagliari municipality or in bordering municipalities to the investigated area.
On the other hand, the ‘Lido’ area is visited by 470 users, and the 40% of them (188 users) are residents outside the Cagliari municipality or its bordering municipalities. This phenomenon confirms the notable attractiveness of the ‘Lido’ area, probably due to the specific characteristics of the place, which offers
Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI): opportunities for spatial planning and governance. 152 several combined services able to satisfy requirements of different user groups, who decide to move and to visit the place. In addition, the ‘Lido’ area capability to attract users is confirmed by the presence of 31 tourists users, namely the 6.60% of the sample, that shared Instagram contributions when visiting the place.