**4. Discussion and Conclusions**

This study describes a major behavioral pattern seen during the COVID-19 crisis in Japan. We found that socioeconomic attributes influenced the changes in frequency of visiting green areas. The attributes further influenced whether the respondents did or did not visit green areas, categorized into three types. Alternatively, environmental contexts, including the residential location of the respondents, was a factor that had a certain influence only on the use of the three types of green areas. These results implied that motivation or actions of visiting green areas tended to be influenced by the socioeconomic attributes of the residents. Environmental contexts might have an influence on the motivation of visiting green areas by providing scenery and an opportunity to visit green areas near the citizens' residential spaces; however, the influence might not be relatively strong compared with that of socioeconomic attributes. The use of specific green areas such as parks, agricultural lands, and gardens tended to be influenced by socioeconomic attributes and environmental contexts. Future policies to promote visits to green areas or to enhance the frequency of visits need to focus on the socioeconomic attributes of residents, such as household income, number of children, gender, and age, rather than environmental ones. These factors influence whether residents will visit green areas or not.

Before the pandemic, a study focusing on a Japanese city suggested that household income and related socioeconomic attributes did not correlate with the use of green areas [27]. Although further research is needed to detect the specific impact of income level on the access and use of green areas, this study showed that income level might have become a factor that influences the use of green areas in Japan. In Europe, socioeconomic attributes, including income level and age, were detected as factors influencing the access of green areas even before the period [28]. As for research in North America, existing studies showed the correlation between high socioeconomic status and access of green areas [8,9]. In China, those attributes were not influential factors on the access of green areas [29], which is a similar trend to that shown in Rupprecht et al. [27]. As for the research published right after the beginning of the pandemic, it was reported that the frequency and access of green areas had changed, as the existing studies, such as Žlender and Thompson [30], analyzed accessibility and purpose of visit [22,24,31]. Some of the research focused on health issues rather than socioeconomic issues [26,32]. As Honey-Rosés et al. [23] suggested, inequities and exclusions can be included in research on access and use of green areas in the pandemic, and this research provided the empirical results that can contribute to these topics. Further empirical research is needed to verify the status and trends of the inequities and exclusions in the access and use of green areas in different regions and countries with different backgrounds, such as post-socialist countries [10].

The question remains as to how one promotes visits from those social stratifications that are not actively visiting the areas. Reflecting on the opinions from the citizens with different socioeconomic attributes, policies and actions are necessary to enhance the accessibility of green areas for residents whose socioeconomic status is relatively low. As for the gender and number of children, they seem not to correlate in the results, although both are factors that influence access and use of green areas. It can be assumed that certain numbers of female respondents visited green areas with their children, but that trend was not very clear in the results. In future research, the detailed influence of gender and

number of children on access to green areas needs to be identified, and specific policies that can be applied for children, parents, and other family members need to be discussed. The involvement of citizens with different backgrounds is needed in the process of policymaking and practices of green area management [7].

Having said this, the environmental contexts of residents are influential once the residents decide to visit the green areas. Therefore, policies regarding the use of specific green areas, including parks, agricultural lands, and gardens, need to be considered with the general policies facilitating visits to green areas. The results suggest that parks were mainly used by urban residents, and agricultural lands and gardens were used by rural residents. If there is a policy demand for facilitating the use of specific green areas, such as agricultural lands, both adequately preparing the green areas and providing opportunities for the use of such areas are required.

**Author Contributions:** Writing—original draft, Y.U.; Writing—review and editing, R.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science: JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers: JP16KK0053; JP17K02105; JP20K12398, as well as the JST-RISTEX Project "Development and Implementation of Consensus Building Method for Policies on Balanced Conservation, Agriculture and Forestry", the Kurita Water and Environment Foundation: 20C002, and the Daiko Foundation: 2019.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
