미세먼지의 야외 여가활동 수요에 대한 효과

Abstract

As the damage of particulate matter (PM) becomes known to the public recently, both mitigation and adaptation to highly concentrated PM have been emphasized. While it has been found that the tendency to avoid PM can also affect the decision-making of outdoor activities, some studies show a positive correlation between PM concentration and visitations. In this extension, this study examines how PM concentration affects the visiting behavior of national parks. For this, we used the actual daily visitation data (from January 1, 2014 to June 30, 2020) to 20 national parks from Korea National Park Service by adopting the fixed effect panel model. The results showed that a positive relationship between the number of visitors and PM concentration but it is insignificant. The results also showed that people are more sensitive to whether or not the high PM concentration than to PM concentration value itself and they reduce visitations as PM concentration level becomes ‘bad’ or worse. In addition, the correlation between PM concentration and visitations appears in a different pattern in winter than in other seasons. These results implies that a simple analysis on the relationship between PM concentration and outdoor activity can lead to misunderstanding and that there is something else people consider more than PM concentration level.