The Value of Greenspace Under Pandemic Lockdown

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak resulted in unprecedented restrictions on citizen’s freedom of movement as governments moved to institute lockdowns designed to reduce the spread of the virus. While most out-of-home leisure activities were prohibited, in England the lockdown rules allowed for restricted use of outdoor greenspace for the purposes of exercise and recreation. In this paper, we use data recorded by Google from location-enabled mobile devices coupled with a detailed recreation demand model to explore the welfare impacts of those constraints on leisure activities. Our analyses reveals evidence of large-scale substitution of leisure time towards recreation in available greenspaces. Indeed, despite the restrictions the economic value of greenspace to the citizens of England fell by only £150 million over lockdown. Examining the outcomes of counterfactual policies we find that the imposition of stricter lockdown rules would have reduced welfare from greenspace by £1.14 billion. In contrast, more relaxed lockdown rules would have delivered an aggregate increase in the economic value of greenspace equal to £1.47 billion.