Abstract
This study aims to identify the influence of the socioeconomic attributes and environmental contexts of citizens’ residential areas on the access and use of green areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results can aid policymaking and facilitate the safe and unrestricted use of green areas during the pandemic. The access and use of green areas were analyzed using a survey conducted after the official COVID-19 emergency in Japan (16 April to 14 May, 2020). Visits to green areas during the pandemic have gained salience globally from multiple perspectives: health, planning, social justice, and equity. The results of this study demonstrated that socioeconomic factors influenced the frequency of visiting green areas. The factors further influenced the use of the three categories of green areas (parks, agricultural lands, and gardens). Environmental contexts, including the land use patterns in residential areas, also influenced the use of specific types of green areas. Thus, policies need to further facilitate visits to green areas by reflecting the socioeconomic attributes of residents and their households, including income, number of children, gender, and age, incorporating those who have less access and considering the spread of COVID-19 locally. Furthermore, policies for the use of specific green areas, including parks, agricultural lands, and gardens, need to take cognizance of the residents’ environmental contexts. Management of specific green areas, like agricultural lands, is required, and residents should be provided with opportunities to use these areas with measures to avoid infection.
Highlights
Green areas, including parks, gardens, agricultural lands, and forest lands, provide various ecosystem services—provisional, regulatory, and cultural [1,2,3]
The results indicated that socioeconomic attributes and environmental contexts that influenced the use of green areas varied among parks, agricultural lands, and gardens (Table 2)
This study describes a major behavioral pattern seen during the COVID-19 crisis in Japan
Summary
Green areas, including parks, gardens, agricultural lands, and forest lands, provide various ecosystem services—provisional, regulatory, and cultural [1,2,3]. As for the betterment of the ecosystem, appropriate management of green areas and their networks can contribute to urban and rural biodiversity conservation if local governments seek national and international collaborations [4,5,6]. Despite these fundamental characteristics, citizens who access such services tend to be relatively limited to only certain socioeconomic statuses and environmental contexts [7,8,9,10]. As fundamental environmental elements that can provide ecosystem services, management of green areas is necessary to enhance the quality of life, for environmental conservation, and to reduce disaster risk in urban and rural areas [14,15,16,17,18]
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