Results for State Park Visitation Models
| Log(Monthly Visits) | Instagram Launch (1) | Instagram Use (2) | Difference-in-Differences (3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram launch (Oct. 2010) | −0.042 | ||
| (0.038) | |||
| Instagram sustained use (Apr. 2012) | 0.013 | −0.007 | |
| (0.040) | (0.039) | ||
| Instagram use × high-activity parks | 0.216*** | ||
| (0.069) | |||
| Economic controls | Y | Y | Y |
| Weather controls | Y | Y | Y |
| Year fixed effects | Y | Y | Y |
| Month fixed effects | Y | Y | Y |
| N | 8,843 | 8,843 | 8,843 |
| R-squared | 0.582 | 0.586 | 0.588 |
Note: The panel model includes 44 parks in the Oregon state park system. Instagram launch = 1 for all observations after its launch in October 2010. Instagram use = 1 for all observations after April 2012 when Instagram images began being geotagged to Oregon state parks. The difference-in-differences approach separates parks into high Instagram activity and low Instagram activity. There are four high-activity parks: Smith Rock, Silver Falls, Oswald West, and Ecola. All specifications include the economic controls of gas prices, housing prices, unemployment rate, and population levels. Weather controls include mean monthly precipitation and a nonlinear function of daily weather in each month. The panel is unbalanced, as there are a few parks that are closed in winter and a few cases of missing monthly visitation data owing to random malfunctions of car counters. Robust standard errors are in parentheses. The full model results are in Appendix Table A4.
* p < 0.1;
** p < 0.05;
↵*** p < 0.01.