Air pollution perception in ten countries during the COVID-19 pandemic

Baowen Lou*, Diego Maria Barbieri*, Marco Passavanti, Cang Hui, Akshay Gupta, Inge Hoff, Daniela Antunes Lessa, Gaurav Sikka, Kevin Chang, Kevin Fang, Louisa Lam, Brij Maharaj, Navid Ghasemi, Yaning Qiao, Solomon Adomako, Ali Foroutan Mirhosseini, Bhaven Naik, Arunabha Banerjee, Fusong Wang, Andrew TuckerZhuangzhuang Liu, Kasun Wijayaratna, Sahra Naseri, Lei Yu, Hao Chen, Benan Shu, Shubham Goswami, Prince Peprah, Amir Hessami, Montasir Abbas, Nithin Agarwal

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

As largely documented in the literature, the stark restrictions enforced worldwide in 2020 to curb the COVID-19 pandemic also curtailed the production of air pollutants to some extent. This study investigates the perception of the air pollution as assessed by individuals located in ten countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Iran, Italy, Norway, South Africa and the USA. The perceptions towards air quality were evaluated by employing an online survey administered in May 2020. Participants (N = 9394) in the ten countries expressed their opinions according to a Likert-scale response. A reduction in pollutant concentration was clearly perceived, albeit to a different extent, by all populations. The survey participants located in India and Italy perceived the largest drop in the air pollution concentration; conversely, the smallest variation was perceived among Chinese and Norwegian respondents. Among all the demographic indicators considered, only gender proved to be statistically significant.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)531-545
Number of pages15
JournalAmbio
Volume51
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Author(s) 2021. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

Keywords

  • Air quality
  • COVID-19 pandemic
  • Environmental pollution
  • Pollution perception
  • Psychometric perception

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