Abstract
COVID-19 stay-at-home orders impacted the way humans interacted with built and natural environments. Previous research on the human use of green spaces during the pandemic, largely conducted in a Western context, has found increased use of home gardens and urban green spaces, and decreased visitation to conservation areas. We explored changes in residents’ outdoor nature-associated activities during the pandemic in the West Bank, Palestine. We used a web-based survey to ask residents about their passive, interactive, and extractive outdoor activities that take place in home gardens, urban parks, and natural areas. Overall, our 1278 respondents spent less time with family and friends and more time alone. We found differences in respondent’s participation in activities both between green space types and between activity types. Participation in passive appreciation of nature activities increased for home gardens but decreased in urban parks and natural areas. Interactive activities, including cultivation, increased for all areas, while extractive activities stayed the same or decreased. Only in natural areas did respondents’ demographics explain changes in activity participation rates after the pandemic. Residents’ increased time alone raises concerns about mental health. The differences we observed in activity participation across green space types highlights the importance of looking across different types of natural spaces and different activities in the same setting, as well as examining non-Western settings.
Highlights
In 2020, the rapid transmission of COVID-19 forced governments around the world to adopt partial or complete lockdowns and impose social distancing measures to flatten the infection curve [1]
We explore how the level of engagement in outdoor nature-associated activities has changed before and after the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the West Bank
About 60% of the population live in single-family housing, which is more likely to have a home garden and backyard, while 40% live in an apartment [47]
Summary
In 2020, the rapid transmission of COVID-19 forced governments around the world to adopt partial or complete lockdowns and impose social distancing measures to flatten the infection curve [1]. Our activities, including work, education, recreation, and shopping, have been changed in terms of when, where, and how they take place [7]. These restrictions on outdoor activities have significant direct and indirect impacts on social-ecological systems [6,8,9]. Wildlife behaviors have changed, including higher nesting rates recorded for species such as leatherback sea turtles and changes in routines for urban birds [4,6,11], while poaching rates decreased across multiple countries [12]
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