Public parks and the pandemic: How park usage has been affected by COVID-19 policies

Public parks serve an important societal function as recreational spaces for diverse communities of people, with well documented physical and mental health benefits. As such, parks may be crucial for how people have handled effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the increasingly limited recreational opportunities, widespread financial uncertainty, and consequent heightened anxiety. Despite the documented benefits of parks, however, many states have instituted park shutdown orders due to fears that public parks could facilitate SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Here we use geotagged social media data from state, county, and local parks throughout New Jersey to examine whether park visitation increased when the COVID-19 pandemic began and whether park shutdown orders were effective at deterring park usage. We compare park usage during four discrete stages of spring 2020: (1) before the pandemic began, (2) during the beginning of the pandemic, (3) during the New Jersey governor’s state-wide park shutdown order, and (4) following the lifting of the shutdown. We find that park visitation increased by 63.4% with the onset of the pandemic. The subsequent park shutdown order caused visitation in closed parks to decline by 76.1% while parks that remained open continued to experience elevated visitation levels. Visitation then returned to elevated pre-shutdown levels when closed parks were allowed to reopen. Altogether, our results indicate that parks continue to provide crucial services to society, particularly in stressful times when opportunities for recreation are limited. Furthermore, our results suggest that policies targeting human behavior can be effective and are largely reversible. As such, we should continue to invest in public parks and to explore the role of parks in managing public health and psychological well-being.

In response to these concerns, some states have instituted park shutdowns, entirely visitation before the closure as people compensated for lack of access to parks (Fig. 1).

107
Role of public parks in the pandemic 108 As hypothesized, we found that the onset of the pandemic was associated with increases 109 in park usage. Park visitation in 2020 was higher during the first month of quarantine than during 110 the same time frame in previous years, even when accounting for increased Instagram usage over 111 time and variations in weather (Fig. 3a). Likewise, we observed that park visitation was higher in 112 the ~3.5 weeks following COVID-19 quarantine restrictions (period 2, before park closures) than 113 in the preceding 3.5 weeks of 2020 (period 1, before the pandemic), exceeding rates of 114 temperature increase (Fig. 3b). Together, these findings demonstrate that the onset of the 115 pandemic was associated with increased utilization of public parks.

117
Efficacy of the executive order 118 We found that the executive order to shut down parks was associated with decreased 119 visitation to state and county parks, suggesting it was largely effective at restricting park usage.

120
While closed parks saw significant declines in visitation from pre-order levels ( Fig. 4b), not all  Finally, we found that park usage largely returned to pre-executive order levels (period 2) 130 following the lifting of the shutdown order (period 4). Park usage was higher after the executive 131 order was lifted than when the shutdown order was in effect; both parks that were closed by the open parks (Fig. 5c). Likewise, park usage following the order was still higher than in previous 139 years; park visitation in May, aggregated across all parks, was higher in 2020 as compared to 140 visitation during May of the previous three years (Fig. 5a). In fact, of the ten most popular days 141 for park visitation during our study period (2017-2020), seven were in May 2020 (Fig. S2a).

142
Thus, the lifting of the shutdown order was associated with increases in park visitation to 143 elevated pre-order levels.

145
By using social media data as a proxy for park visitation, we found (1) that park usage Efficacy of the executive order 209 We also found here that people were highly responsive to the governor s executive order 210 to close parks. We observed substantive declines in visitation to closed parks associated with the 211 executive order, suggesting that the order was largely effective at deterring park visitation.

212
Likewise, the executive order seemingly did not induce panic; in contrast to our predictions ( Though the park shutdown order seems to have been largely effective at reducing park 243 usage, this does not mean that it was necessarily the best policy for curtailing the pandemic.

244
Other work has suggested that parks are not the transmission centers for COVID-19 as some were also in place that had not been previously. Still, given such findings and the aforementioned 251 benefits that parks serve, we suggest that park shutdowns may not be the best means of curbing 252 the pandemic. Instead, we should continue to expand our public park infrastructure and increase 253 the accessibility of existing parks so that more people can access the multifaceted benefits that Our finding suggests that this may not be the case. We observed that people returned quite 273 quickly to parks when they reopened, and that they visited parks at the same rates they had 274 before the shutdown. This could also be the case with other forms of recreation as they reopen.

281
Finally, our results suggest that the effects of the executive order were largely reversible; 282 the lifting of the order did not cause people to visit parks any more than they had been before the 283 order. This further emphasizes that people are highly responsive to such orders and policies, and 284 also makes clear that policy decisions do not need to be thought of as final or irreversible.

285
Policymakers and leaders can and should explore policy options in real time to evaluate which 286 policies are most effective for dealing with the specific situation at hand. We are not beholden to 287 the first response we try; there is space to experiment. those that made obvious reference to park trips from before the governor s order.

363
There were a few limitations to this approach. First, we were only able to use geotagged information on closure status during the executive order was not available (Fig. 2). As such, 408 these seven parks were excluded from all analyses that compared closed and open parks. a function of year, maximum daily temperature, and daily precipitation rate (Fig. 3a). We 432 considered a model variable to have an effect on park visitation (i.e. be significant ) if the 95% 433 confidence interval did not overlap zero.

434
To further determine whether the work from home order was associated with increased 435 park visitation, we compared PUD during the first month of quarantine (period 2) to the 436 equivalent time frame before COVID-19 quarantine restrictions were put in place in 2020 437 (period 1). For this analysis, we did not accommodate the change in Instagram user numbers, as 438 Instagram user data were only available at annual scale. We used our bootstrap methodology to 439 model PUD, aggregated across parks, as a function of pre-and post-quarantine status, maximum 440 daily temperature, and daily precipitation rate (Fig. 3b).

442
Efficacy of the executive order 443 To determine whether the New Jersey governor s park closure order was associated with 444 changes in park usage, we compared visitation patterns before (period 2) and during (period 3) 445 the order in parks that were made to close and parks that remained open (Fig. 4) (Fig. 5b). 469 Finally, we wanted to determine how post-order visitation levels (period 4) compared to 470 park visitation during the initial stages of the pandemic (period 2), to see whether park usage 471 increased in the aftermath of the park shutdown, particularly in the parks that had been closed.

472
Again, we detrended PUD by temperature (since temperature differed between the two periods).

473
For this analysis, we subsetted our post-executive order dataset (period 4) to only the first four averaged over the previous seven days. We predict that the stay-at-home order (period 2) caused 617 people to use parks more (relative to baseline usage before quarantine; period 1). We predict that