Increased nationwide recreational mobility in green spaces in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic

Recreation in green spaces has seen a pervasive decrease during the last two decades, particularly in urban areas, suggesting a shift away from contact with nature in Western countries. There is some evidence that the response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased recreational mobility in urban green spaces during the initial phases of the pandemic; however, it is not clear whether the sudden and extensive disruption of people's lives may have led to nationwide changes in green space use in both rural and urban areas, and whether the pandemic has reinforced or attenuated already existing social inequalities in recreational green space use. We used daily nationwide aggregated mobility data from more than 2 million cell phone subscribers in 14,331 geographical grids across Norway to examine potential changes in mobility to green spaces as measured with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) during the pandemic, while controlling for weather conditions, holidays, and sociodemographic characteristics of neighborhoods. Moreover, we used neighborhood level registry data about household income, proportion of immigrants and education level to examine if there were social inequalities in changes in green space use. Results from linear mixed model analyses showed an increase in recreational dwells in green spaces during the pandemic, that was most prominent in areas of low socioeconomic status and high population density. In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increase in recreational mobility in green spaces across Norway, with the most significant increase observed in low socioeconomic status areas and high population density regions, indicating the potential of the pandemic to reduce already existing social inequalities in green space use.