I recently listened to a fascinating podcast about the naturalist community in Japan, specifically about entomology. However, when I look at iNaturalist statistics for Japan, there appear to be very few observations/observers/identifiers given the population and level of development. I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas as to why this might be?
This figure shows the number of Observations, Observers, and Identifiers for select countries that have similar populations. Japan (red X) is way below the trend lines for all 3 metrics.
Interestingly, South Korea (blue triangle) clusters with Japan, although South Korea has a population that is less than 1/2 that of Japan.
In cases like this my immediate thought is that they’re likely using another platform (like observation.org in Europe). The only one I can find with a quick search is “Biome”, which does seem pretty popular but as far as I can tell it doesn’t have a social aspect that would help a naturalist community collaborate.
Might language be a factor? I don’t know a lot about the history of when iNaturalist became available in different languages, and the degree to which those languages are supported, but I notice that a lot of the countries high in the iNaturalist participation rankings are English- or Spanish-speaking.
Japan is famously selective in its uptake of foreign culture, so things that are popular in Europe or the US are often not popular there. English mastery is also not especially common.
For what it’s worth, the graph seems to me to show that iNat’s popularity correlates with Euro-American cultural influence (“the West”) rather than GDP.
Having made a few hundred observations in Japan, I find it to be a small but very dedicated community, particularly when it comes to particular groups of organisms.
Does anyone know if these other citizen science apps feed data to GBIF? If so, we could test whether these other apps explain the difference in iNat observations…
This has also been my question for a while. Although I’ve lived in the US for a long time, I was born and raised in Japan so I knew the nature-loving culture of Japanese people and thought they would love a platform like iNaturalist. But whenever I introduce iNat to my friends in Japan, they think it’s too technical and intimidating. Many people love Biome because it’s casual and simple to use (which I found a bit too limited for my personal needs). Others already have their favorite communities or online groups on mainstream SNS such as Facebook, X or Instagram and simply don’t want to start using new platforms.
And yes, the language also has a lot to do with it. Even with all sorts of auto-translation software available these days, Japanese remains to be one of the hardest languages to translate, especially if you seek for accuracy and reliability in particular fields such as science. So in my opinion, to rely that level of undertakings on volunteers without fair compensation, is just asking too much. Even though I have both linguistic and cultural skills to do it, I wouldn’t consider unless it was offered as a paid position (or I’m retired with a good nest egg, lol). If I do, I’d have no time to contribute to my local community as an observer/identifier! I’d guess that’s also probably why volunteer-based translation of iNat in Japan hasn’t made much progress.
i wonder if the social interaction part of iNat contributes significantly to that intimidation? i would guess that many normal social interactions in Japan depend a lot about understanding some social context, but that’s not always easy to parse in a platform like iNaturalist. so especially when many interactions involve correcting identifications or asking for more information, does that create potential for a lot of socially awkward interactions?
I think general users prefer more casual interactions such as “Oh that’s cute” or “What a strange bug!” so they tend to favor platforms where such comments are widely exchanged. That could be a reason they think iNat is too serious (or boring). On the other hand, many avid naturalists in Japan already have elaborate blogs and websites on their own, therefore they don’t have to rely on any SNS. When I search for galls and insects in Japan, I come across some amazing photos/records mostly on someone’s personal hobby websites, only available in Japanese language, of course. So, those who are already knowledgeable and could become great identifiers may not be attracted to iNat because mingling with novices and general observers could be more work with less gain for them.
