SmartState Center for Tourism and Economic Development partners with Biology, Geography, and regional agencies on interdisciplinary firefly research initiative

The College of Hospitality, Retail, and Sport Management at the University of South Carolina is proud to announce its participation in a federally funded research initiative examining the ecological and economic significance of firefly viewing events at Congaree National Park. The project is funded by the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission and led in collaboration with the Central Midlands Council of Governments.

Doctoral students Seonjin Lee and Hani Cho, along with undergraduate student Riley Martin, represented HRSM at the highly anticipated annual Firefly Viewing Event held at Congaree National Park. Over the course of eight days, the team engaged directly with event visitors, collecting contact information to facilitate a follow-up survey designed to capture visitor experiences, travel motivations, spending behaviors, and attitudes toward nature-based tourism.

The SmartState Center for Economic Excellence in Tourism and Economic Development, directed by Professor Lori Pennington-Gray, serves as a co-investigator on the project. The Center's primary role is to analyze tourism and economic data to inform the development of a comprehensive firefly tourism plan for the region. This includes examining visitor profiles, economic impact, and the role of the Congaree Firefly event in attracting tourism to the broader Columbia area.

The online questionnaire developed in collaboration between SmartState researchers and project partners will explore visitor motivations for entering the firefly lottery, trip characteristics such as travel party composition and overnight accommodations, visitor expenditures, and broader travel behaviors. Mobility trace data and spending analytics will further enable the team to analyze the sociodemographic profiles of firefly event attendees from both this year and prior seasons.

This interdisciplinary project brings together expertise from the Department of Biology, the Department of Geography, and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at USC. Research efforts span firefly species identification, biogeographic mapping of firefly habitats, and the quantification of the social and economic value of firefly tourism for the Midlands region. The project is led by Principal Investigator Eric LoPresti, assistant professor of Biology at USC, with program management provided by Jory Fleming, regional environmental planner at the Central Midlands Council of Governments, who is also affiliated with the Geography Department at USC.

Findings from this research are expected to directly inform tourism planning strategies for the Congaree Firefly event and support the broader regional stakeholders invested in sustainable nature-based tourism development.