Air Pollution Under Covid-19 Increases Gym Sports Travel Behaviour

Air pollution may change people’s gym sports travel behaviour. To test this claim, firstly we designed a city-level questionnaire (n=488) of Beijing, China and regression models to evaluate people’s gym sports travel mode choice on polluted days. Results show that people have a high possibility of switching from outdoor sports to gym sports on polluted days. People with high awareness of air concern have a higher possibility of travelling to gym sports. Second, using big data crawler technology and negative binomial regression model, we provide consistent evidence that PM 2.5 concentration derived from land use regression model (LUR) is positive associated with gym visits under COVID-19. Finally, subgroups analysis show that urban people and males have a higher tendency to travelling to gyms under COVID-19. All in all, subjective air concern and the actual air pollution concentration under COVID-19 both have positive effects on people’s gym sports travel behaviour.