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Changes in Air-Pollution-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland

Low air quality in Poland is a problem of particularly high urgency. Therefore, Poles must be aware of air quality levels, also during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aimed to compare air-pollution-related information-seeking behaviour between the pre- and intra-pandemic periods as well as between...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Nazar, Wojciech, Niedoszytko, Marek
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103979/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35565002
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095613
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author Nazar, Wojciech
Niedoszytko, Marek
author_facet Nazar, Wojciech
Niedoszytko, Marek
author_sort Nazar, Wojciech
collection PubMed
description Low air quality in Poland is a problem of particularly high urgency. Therefore, Poles must be aware of air quality levels, also during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aimed to compare air-pollution-related information-seeking behaviour between the pre- and intra-pandemic periods as well as between the actual and theoretical machine-learning-forecasted intra-pandemic models. Google Trends search volumes (GTSVs) in Poland for air-pollution-related keywords were collected between January 2016 and January 2022. To investigate the changes that would have occurred without the outbreak of the pandemic, Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) machine-learning models were trained. Approximately 4,500,000 search queries were analysed. Between pre- and intra-pandemic periods, weighted mean GTSVs changed by −39.0%. When the actual intra-pandemic weighted mean GTSVs were compared to the intra-pandemic forecasts, the actual values were lower by −16.5% (SARIMA’s error = 6.2%). Compared to the pre-pandemic period, in the intra-pandemic period, the number of search queries containing keywords connected with air pollution decreased. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic might have facilitated the decrease. Possible causes include an attention shift towards everyday problems connected to the pandemic, worse mental health status and lower outdoor exposure that might have resulted in a lower intensity of non-pandemic-related active information-seeking behaviour.
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spelling pubmed-91039792022-05-14 Changes in Air-Pollution-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland Nazar, Wojciech Niedoszytko, Marek Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Low air quality in Poland is a problem of particularly high urgency. Therefore, Poles must be aware of air quality levels, also during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aimed to compare air-pollution-related information-seeking behaviour between the pre- and intra-pandemic periods as well as between the actual and theoretical machine-learning-forecasted intra-pandemic models. Google Trends search volumes (GTSVs) in Poland for air-pollution-related keywords were collected between January 2016 and January 2022. To investigate the changes that would have occurred without the outbreak of the pandemic, Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) machine-learning models were trained. Approximately 4,500,000 search queries were analysed. Between pre- and intra-pandemic periods, weighted mean GTSVs changed by −39.0%. When the actual intra-pandemic weighted mean GTSVs were compared to the intra-pandemic forecasts, the actual values were lower by −16.5% (SARIMA’s error = 6.2%). Compared to the pre-pandemic period, in the intra-pandemic period, the number of search queries containing keywords connected with air pollution decreased. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic might have facilitated the decrease. Possible causes include an attention shift towards everyday problems connected to the pandemic, worse mental health status and lower outdoor exposure that might have resulted in a lower intensity of non-pandemic-related active information-seeking behaviour. MDPI 2022-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9103979/ /pubmed/35565002 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095613 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Nazar, Wojciech
Niedoszytko, Marek
Changes in Air-Pollution-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland
title Changes in Air-Pollution-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland
title_full Changes in Air-Pollution-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland
title_fullStr Changes in Air-Pollution-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland
title_full_unstemmed Changes in Air-Pollution-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland
title_short Changes in Air-Pollution-Related Information-Seeking Behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland
title_sort changes in air-pollution-related information-seeking behaviour during the covid-19 pandemic in poland
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9103979/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35565002
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095613
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