Human Mobility to Parks under the COVID-19 Pandemic and Wildfire Seasons
in the Western and Central United States
Abstract
In 2020, people’s health suffered a great crisis under the dual effects
of the COVID-19 pandemic and the extensive, severe wildfire in the
western and central United States (U.S.). Parks, including city,
national, and cultural parks, offer a unique opportunity for people to
maintain their recreation behaviors following the social distancing
protocols during the pandemics. However, massive forest wildfires in
western and central US, producing harmful toxic gases and smoke, pose
significant threats to human health and affect their recreation
behaviors and visitations to parks. In this study, we employed the
Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) Models to
investigate how COVID-19 and wildfires jointly shaped human visitations
to parks, regarding the number of visitors, dwell time, and travel
distance from home, during June - September 2020. Our findings indicated
that people tended to travel closer from home and spent less time at
parks as more COVID-19 cases were reported. However, with the
stay-at-home restriction lifted and the reopen of some large national
parks, people traveled further distances to those places (e.g.,
Yellowstone National Park) regardless the peak of pandemics in June
2020. Moreover, we found people intended to decrease the visitations to
the parks surrounded by wildfires and shorten the time there. This study
provides important insights on people’s responses in recreation and
social behaviors when facing multiple serve crises that impact their
health and wellbeing, which could support the preparation and mitigation
of the health impacts from future pandemics and natural hazards.