The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of and attitudes towards urban forests and green spaces: Exploring the instigators of change in Belgium

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted our society, producing drastic changes in people's routines and daily mobility, and putting public spaces under a new light. This paper starts with the premise that the use of urban forests and green spaces -where and for who they were available and accessible -increased, when social restrictions were most stringent. It takes an explorative approach to examine changes in attitude towards urban forests and urban green spaces in terms of attraction (i.e., as the actual use behaviour), intended use (i.e., intention of going to green spaces), and civic engagement in relation to green spaces. In particular, it analyses the responses to a survey of 1987 respondents in Belgium and statistically examines the relationship between sociodemographic characteristics, urbanisation characteristics, actual and intended green space use, and changes in attitudes towards green spaces and civic engagement. The findings show that highly educated citizens experienced an increase in actual and intended use of green spaces during the pandemic, but that this increase differs among sociodemographic profiles such as impact of age or access to private green, and depends on their local built environment characteristics. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted citizens' attitudes, as well as (intended) behaviour and civil engagement with respect to the green spaces in their area.

Urban green spaces and stress during COVID-19 lockdown: A case study for the city of Madrid

“…The results obtained reinforce those of other studies that emphasize the importance of UGS in hard times ( da Schio et al, 2021 ; Venter et al, 2021 ). And it concurs with Ribeiro ( Ribeiro et al, 2021 ), who establishes a comparison between Portugal and Spain.…”

Impacts of nature deprivations during the COVID-19 pandemic: A pre-post comparison

“…Alternatively, adoption of remote working policies may have increased some individuals' available time for nature interactions in their neighborhood ( Derks et al, 2020 ; Soga et al, 2021 ). At the same time, it is also possible that motivation to interact with nature was affected; there is some evidence that the importance of nature experiences increased during the lockdowns ( da Schio et al, 2021 ; Rousseau and Deschacht, 2020 ). In addition to causing nearly a million human deaths worldwide, the pandemic has diminished the health and well-being of many more individuals.…”

“…Similarly, we are not aware of any study that quantified changes in experiences of nature along with other factors, such as health or well-being. Although recent COVID-19 studies provided us insights on changes in nature interactions during the pandemic (e.g., da Schio et al, 2021 ; Rousseau and Deschacht, 2020 ), our understanding of the extent to which changes in nature interactions during the pandemic affected human health remains very limited.…”

Spatial statistical analysis of the relationship between self-reported mental health during the COVID-19 lockdown and closeness to green infrastructure

“…This is aligned with the conclusions drawn by Venter et al (2020) and Geng et al (2021) , who highlighted a significant increase in the recreational use of green areas under flexible confinement conditions. These findings were further ratified by da Schio et al (2021) , who argued that the value attributed to GI has increased during the pandemic.…”