How the Covid-19 pandemic contributed to changes in climate change and environmental concern, resource-saving and waste-sorting behaviour

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed not only attitudes and habits related to health care but also encompassed all other spheres even those related to environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behaviour. All the people spending the majority of their time at home had additional opportunities to change their habits, particularly those related to environmental aspects. Thus, the aim of this paper was to examine the Covid-19 contribution to the changes in the environmental, climate change and pandemic concerns during the period of the second wave and the slowdown of the Covid-19 pandemic before the other crises such as the energy crisis and inflation began. Furthermore, in this paper, the changes in resource-saving and waste-sorting behaviour and its determinants were analysed. The results revealed that during the pandemic the environmental and climate change concern increased significantly, and people also declared that the pandemic has encouraged them to sort waste and save natural resources more. Meanwhile, the concern about the Covid-19 pandemic decreased due to successful vaccination, other management tools for this illness and the emerging of another crisis. After analysing the main factors of changes in resource-saving and waste-sorting behaviour, we found that the changes in environmental concern influenced these behaviours the most. Changes in the Covid-19 pandemic concern also statistically significantly encouraged people to change resource-saving and waste-sorting behaviour. The environmental risk during the Covid-19 pandemic, significantly impacted the changes in resource-saving behaviour only. Meanwhile, the changes in climate change concern insignificantly influenced both pro-environmental behaviours. Therefore, this study reveals that the Covid-19 pandemic has taught people not only to care about the environment more but to carry out pro-environmental behaviour as well.