Fig 1.
Daily new COVID-19 cases reported in New Jersey, with key policy events marked and their predicted impacts on the use of public parks depicted.
Light purple bars correspond to the number of new cases per day, whereas the dark blue line reflects the number of new cases averaged over the previous seven days. We predict that the stay-at-home order (period 2) caused people to use parks more (relative to baseline usage before quarantine; period 1). We predict that the subsequent park shutdown order (period 3) was largely effective at reducing park usage in closed parks but possibly concentrated people in the parks that remained open. Finally, we predict that the end of the shutdown order (period 4) caused people to return to parks at higher levels than they had before the shutdown. New Jersey COVID-19 case data are from [31].
Fig 2.
The distribution of New Jersey parks included in this study (n = 98).
Parks in blue (n = 12) remained open through the whole study period, whereas parks in red (n = 79) were closed during the governor’s executive order (April 8th—May 2nd). For parks colored in grey (n = 7), we were unable to find information on their status during the park shutdown order, so these parks were excluded from all analyses comparing closed and open parks.
Fig 3.
The effects of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on park visitation (as measured by PUD, photograph user days).
(a) Park usage during mid-March through early April of 2020 was higher relative to previous years, and (b) park visitation increased when the stay-at-home order was put into effect, even after controlling for temperature increases. The red trendline in (b) corresponds to temperature trends during this interval, whereas the blue trendline corresponds to the overall trend in park visitation. The numbers in red circles refer to the time periods denoted in Fig 1.
Fig 4.
(a) The impact of the New Jersey governor’s executive order to shut down parks on park visitation (a). (b) Visitation in closed parks dropped substantially, whereas (c) changes in visitation to parks that remained open were much more variable. The numbers in red circles in (b) and (c) refer to time periods denoted in Fig 1.
Fig 5.
The effects of the lifting of the park shutdown order on park visitation.
(a) Park usage during May 2020 was higher relative to previous years. (b) Increases in visitation were much larger in formerly closed parks as compared to parks that had remained open. However, (c) visitation did not exceed visitation levels from before the shutdown. The numbers in red circles in (a) and (c) refer to time periods denoted in Fig 1.