I recently listened to a fascinating podcast about the naturalist community in Japan, specifically about their interest in 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.
This figure shows the number of Observations, Observers, and Identifiers versus per capita GDP for select countries that have similar populations. Japan (red X) is way below the trend lines for all 3 metrics. Mexico (green asterisk) is way above trend.
Interestingly, South Korea (blue triangle) clusters with Japan, although South Korea has a population that is less than 1/2 that of Japan.
Japan clusters with the Philippines and Egypt based on population. Interestingly, the trend lines for iNat statistics and total population are not as consistent as per capita GDP. (China is excluded from the chart above and the one below because its population is an outlier compared to the other countries.)
Conclusions
In this dataset, the strongest r value was Observers versus per capita GDP. The second highest was Identifiers versus Total GDP. The lowest was Observers versus Total Population. This is consistent with the hypothesis that level of development (as measured by GDP) is the strongest predictor of iNat usage.
For an interactive version of these charts on Tableau Public, use this link: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/alexandra.permar/viz/iNatCountryComparison/
