COVID-19’s effects on sense of place and pro-environmental behaviour

Abstract

COVID-19 substantially disrupted daily life globally. Human geography and environmental psychology scholars have argued that dramatic shifts in how people used urban environments during the pandemic could have important implications for those studying human–environment relationships and for planners designing urban spaces. Nevertheless, empirical data that examine shifts in human–environment relationships in urban areas during the pandemic are still limited. We explored how COVID-19 influenced sense of place and investigated how sense of place and changes to daily life because of the pandemic affected environmentally friendly behaviours. A case study involved working with 10 interview participants and 302 survey respondents in Wuhan, China—the city where the pandemic started, and which experienced very strict lockdowns. Data collection occurred in June 2021. The results reveal three main findings. First, stronger emotions directed towards the pandemic and heightened pandemic responses positively affected sense of place, with response behaviours including taking disease prevention measures, spending more time with families/friends, and helping others during the crisis. Second, sense of place and behavioural response to the pandemic were both associated with environmentally friendly behaviours, but not with environmentally friendly attitudes. Third, the nation and city, rather than the community level, are the geographic scales most consonant with respondent notions of place; sense of place grew most at these scales during the pandemic. We conclude that contrary to some speculation, sense of place was enhanced during the pandemic, at least in Wuhan. The pandemic also provided an opportunity for behaviour transitions, but not necessarily via changes in sense of place.