Using Mobility Data to Measure Visitation Across Massachusetts State Parks

The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) manages one of the largest and most diverse state park systems in the country: nearly half a million acres and hundreds of properties, from urban parkways, pools, and beaches to reservations, campgrounds, and state forests. Most are open to the public without gates or tickets, so there is no simple way to count who comes in. Counters and surveys can cover a handful of sites, but not a system this size. To inform staffing, programming, and capital planning, DCR needed a system-wide picture of who visits each property, how they arrive, and how long they stay.

ERG estimated visitation from passively collected mobile-device location data, which records visitors regardless of where or how they enter a property. Using nearly six years of data, ERG identified visits within each property’s boundary, removed pass-through traffic, and weighted the sample to represent the resident population. Linking visitors’ home areas to U.S. Census data yielded demographic profiles; movement patterns revealed mode of travel, length of stay, and return rates; and hotspot maps showed where activity concentrated within each property. ERG checked the estimates against DCR’s own camping and visitation records, compared them across data providers, and confirmed that they followed the expected seasonal patterns and multi-year trends. Results were delivered in formats that work in DCR’s own GIS tools. DCR now uses the results to inform funding decisions across its properties, and the visitor profiles give DCR a foundation for estimating the economic benefits its parks provide.