Green Space (GS) Attendance and Prosociality: Comparison
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Please note this is a comparison between Version 1 by Tania Noël and Version 3 by Dean Liu.

In times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, social ties can literally be a lifeline. A way to create, maintain, and strengthen connections between people is by assisting others by adopting prosocial behaviors. An emergent body of evidence shows the impact of exposure to nature on prosocial attitudes and interpersonal relationships. This study examines relationships between green space (GS) attendance, perceived beauty of the space, perceived crowdedness of the space, and prosocial behavior.

 

  • urban green space
  • social orientation
  • prosocial behavior
  • COVID-19

1. Introduction

Human society and cities suffer from various crises at any time, including pandemics like the H1N1 virus, polio, Ebola, or Zika, which rwesearchers face in the current century. In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO), WHO’s highest alarm level. If pandemics have always existed, their occurrence keeps growing. In the current context, it is important to reflect on how to improve theour capacity to deal with such crises, while considering that solutions have to be sustainable, i.e., that they consider both human and environmental aspects. Researchers In this study, we would like to highlight the potential of publicly accessible urban green spaces (GS) to help face the consequences of crises such as pandemics.

2. The impact of GS on Prosocial Behaviors

In times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, social ties can literally be a lifeline. One possible way to create, maintain, and strengthen connections with others, and, thus, improve theour social capital, would be to assist others by adopting prosocial behaviors [1]. Prosociality refers to the tendency to care for, help, and assist others [2]. People’s actions and behaviors, like their interactions with others, are not only influenced by their social environment (i.e., other people) but are also affected by a relatively ‘asocial’ natural environment [2]. Some experimental studies demonstrate that nature exposure can directly increase prosociality [3][4][5]. In a field experiment, passers-by who just walked across a park were more likely to help confederates who accidentally dropped a glove on the ground, than passers-by who were tested before entering the park [3]. Another study found out that, compared to sitting in a windowless laboratory room, sitting in a park boosted feelings of interconnectedness [4]. Even incidental exposure to nature in the lab, by looking at pictures of nature instead of pictures of urban environments can enhance prosociality [5]. Research documents two characteristics/qualities of natural environments that drive theour orientation to others and their needs: feelings of awe [6] and perception of beauty [7][8]. Awe involves positively valenced feelings of wonder and amazement and, at least in Western cultures, comes up in encounters with nature like sunsets, scenic vistas, and mountain ranges [2][9]. However, most people do not have access to “awe-inspiring” GS on a daily basis, given that it seems almost impossible to find this type of landscape in urban environments. Fortunately, awe is not the only dimension that triggers increased social connection. The perception of beauty in natural environments can also increase prosocial tendencies [7][8]. Participants exposed to a beautiful nature report increased positivity and, as a consequence, behave more prosocial and are more willing to incur costs for the benefit of other participants [7][8]. In one set of experiments, participants who viewed beautiful nature pictures were more generous in an economic game than those who viewed more mundane nature images, and participants exposed to beautiful plants provided more help by constructing origami figures for tsunami victims than those exposed to more ordinary plants [8]. While rwesearchers c can assume that urban GS can hardly provide a feeling of awe, they can be perceived as beautiful and aesthetic and, therefore, appear to have the potential to contribute to the prosocial behaviors of individuals who attend them.
If a lot of research suggests that social interactions are positively influenced by GS’ presence and quality [10][11][12][13], such as the aesthetic and well-maintained appearance of the space mentioned before, it is important to highlight that these studies focus mostly on the physical aspects of the spaces. However, these spaces also include a whole “social” aspect due, for example, to the presence or absence of people, the interactions sought or avoided, or the activities that do or do not take place there. This social aspect seemed central to reusearchers  given the pandemic situation and the resulting restrictions of social contacts. ResearchersWe often assume that urban GS are mainly seen as meeting places, given that they provide opportunities for people to interact with others in ways that may not occur in other settings [10]. Although these spaces are indeed important meeting places in the urban environment, it is important to highlight that, even if people tend to engage in small talk with other visitors, they generally do not visit parks with the intention to meet strangers [14]. Not seeking contact with strangers when visiting GS appeared even truer during the pandemic—with a significant reduction of activities that could be considered as high-risk activities such as meeting people [15]. A study conducted during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Croatia, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Spain, supports the importance to expand the role of GS beyond the fact of just creating and maintaining social bonds and emphasizes that parks and other urban GS have essential functions that are fundamentally different from other types of public places [15]. While urban GS can of course serve as a center of public gathering, they also meet vital needs of isolation from ambient urban stress and provide space to disconnect and relax [16] [15]. In this period of a pandemic, it, therefore, seems possible that urban GS have mainly fulfilled a function of withdrawal from stressful environments (urban environment, family environment, overcrowded housing…) and responded primarily to an objective of restoration, rather than to an objective of socialization. This is also suggested by a study that compared the reasons for using GS before (2019) and during COVID-19 pandemic (2020), highlighting an increase in people’s self-reported need to use GS for ‘stress relief’ [17]. As mentioned before, natural environments can influence people’s prosocial behaviors [2], but the social environment seems equally important, particularly in the very specific context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented measures of social restrictions associated with it. In this context, it is conceivable that uncrowded places allow stress reduction on individuals, which allows mood improvement and, thus, positively impacts the attitude toward others. On the opposite, overcrowded places can induce additional stress, not only because they do not allow the desired isolation, but also because of the increased risk of contamination that this represents. This reasoning is consistent with data from a study showing that the main self-reported reason for the non-use of GS among people who decreased GS attendance during lockdown is the fear and anxiety about coronavirus [17].

3. Hypotheses

The current study was designed to explore how GS attendance, perceived beauty of the GS, and perceived crowdedness of the GS, relate to social orientation during this specific time of health crisis. Specifically, researcherswe make the hypothesis that the positive relationship between GS attendance and prosocial behavior will only appear when the most regularly used GS is perceived as beautiful and uncrowded.

4. Methods and Main Results

A cross-sectional study using convenience and snowball sampling was conducted among French-speaking people in April 2020. Data were collected in April 2020, during the first COVID-19 lockdown, using an online survey. A total of 1206 participants (972 female, aged between 17 and 77 years, Mage = 28.74, SDage = 12.87) participated in this study. Data from 610 participants (465 female, aged between 17 and 77 years, Mage = 28.63, SDage = 12.75) were analyzed after removing those who indicated that they had not left their homes at all from the beginning of the lockdown or only for utility purposes.

The survey started with a measure of prosocial behavior, in which participants were asked to allocate points to themselves and a hypothetical other. The real purpose of this measure was hidden from participants. Participants were then informed that they were now moving on to the main study. After socio-demographic questions and questions about participants' lockdown conditions, participants were asked to indicate how many times they attended a GS since the beginning of their lockdown. If participants indicated that they had visited a GS at least once, they were asked to indicate the number of times they had visited the GS they felt they had visited most since the beginning of their lockdown. Participants were then asked to evaluate the beauty and the perceived crowdedness of this specific GS. The study ended with a debriefing explaining the objectives of the study.

Multiple linear regressions show that the interaction between GS attendance and perceived crowdedness of the place was significantly associated with prosocial behavior. After decomposition of the interaction, the our results suggest a significant relationship between GS attendance and prosocial behavior but only when the crowdedness of the most visited GS was perceived as low. Contrary to the hypothesis, results did not show a significant relationship between beauty perception, attendance rate, and prosocial behavior.

5. Conclusion

These results seem to support the fact that theour use and perception of nature are influenced by external events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and underline the

importance of GS to fulfill vital needs of isolation and disconnection. The results of this study, which are in line with many other studies pointing out the potentially positive impact of GS on populations, can have concrete implications for urban planning and management policies. It seems currently accepted that COVID-19 is hitting the hardest lower-income groups [18]. During the pandemic, poverty and wage inequality raised in all European countries [19]. Bearing this in mind, cities need to find ways to function during these disturbances and to provide their most vulnerable populations with the necessary tools to cope as best as possible with such crises. Maintaining or increasing spaces for nature, while keeping it accessible to the public, seems to be part of it.

References

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