Recreational response patterns by sociodemographic groups in a pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of recreation as people flocked outdoors for socially distant activities. However, gaps remain in our understanding of how pandemics impact recreation and the unequal distribution of impacts across communities. Our study used cell phone data from Safegraph to explore census block level changes to local park visitation in California, USA, during the first 27 weeks of the pandemic. We utilized Latent Class Analysis to examine visitation based on sociodemographic groupings of race/ethnicity, income, and age. We found that African American communities experienced the largest decline in visitation and that communities with more Hispanic and Asian populations did not revert to prior visitation levels. Our work demonstrates the importance of recreation in communities and provides an easily interpretable method for evaluation to understand how humans use their environment.