Geocaching Stickiness

Do people stick to the game of Geocaching? An analysis* with the help of Geocaching Australia:

Have you ever wondered what are the chances that you will see that cacher again you just stumbled upon? While the number of people who heard about or even tried geocaching are constantly increasing, it’s always a mystery if they will be around for longer. So here are some numbers and hard facts:

Out of the 110,497 people who have logged caches in Australia since 2000, 3/4 of them (82,000) have only ever found 17 caches or less!

If you include our friends across the ditch and set the bar a bit higher it draws a similar picture: From the 110487 people who found at least one cache before 2015 in Australia and New Zealand, only 11353 have found more than 100 which is about 10% of all cachers. It is fair to say that 90% have left before hitting 100 (or are just have yet to hit that mark).

3/4 of all people who’ve cached in Australia stopped logging caches at or before 224 days! 1/2 of them (55,000 or so) stopped caching within two weeks!

While the growth of new geocachers is pretty spectacular with over 32,000 new players in 2014(!), the longevity of most is still quite low: 3/4 of those people found less than nine caches and logged for only one month (approximately). It would seem that geocaching, although increasing in numbers does not have any real significant “stickiness”.

The moral of this story:
Geocaching is as sticky as polytetrafluoroethylene. Embrace the new players, but don’t be surprised if you never run into them again … statistically speaking. 

Thanks to Geocaching Australia for providing these most interesting statistics. Have a look at their website. There you will find a lot more number crunching.

Cheers :)
Philipp

P.S.: If you are in the 1000+ club you are one of the 1%!

* There are plenty of uncertainties on these statistics (e.g. overseas cachers) but these are marginal errors