What is the Level of Satisfaction with Environmental Factors During COVID-19?

Abstract

Introduction: In response to climate change and infectious disease prevention, the importance of the environment and health has increased, as human health and wellbeing has been devastating from the Covid-19 crisis. Satisfaction is a key factor of the quality of life. In order to provide policy priorities combating climate change and Covid-19, providing the satisfaction among environmental factors and key factors affecting the willingness to pay for the environmental health might be crucial.

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to identify satisfaction of residents with environmental factors and examine determinants of influencing their willingness to pay for the environment health.

Methods: An importance-performance analysis was used to explore the level of satisfaction regarding environmental factors during Covid-19. This is based on a survey data of 332 residents in Chungnam province, South Korea. Logistic regression analysis was implemented to find out the factors influencing the willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental health.

Results: The findings revealed that climate change, waste, energy, air, environmental health were key attributes required the highest priority for improvement. Logistic regression analysis examined that satisfaction of environmental health was a main factor associated with the residents’ WTP for environmental health.

Conclusions: The attributes which are low satisfaction and high perception on the importance are needed to be improved. The outbreak of Covid-19pandemic might be relevant to decrease in the satisfaction of environmental health. This suggests that the improving the services of environmental health might be important for post- pandemic period. These finding could contribute to improving environmental factors and the sustainability of environmental planning.