Journal of Rural Studies 106 (2024) 103221 Available online 22 January 2024 0743-0167/© 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Changes in park visits and the shift towards rural recreation: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK Xiaohuan Xie a, b , Ruobing Wang a , Zhonghua Gou c, * a School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shenzhen University, Nanhai Ave 3688, Shenzhen, 518060, China b Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Built Environment Optimization, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China c School of Urban Design, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Rural recreation COVID-19 Park visits Multisource datasets Peri-urban rural parks ABSTRACT The spread of COVID-19 and corresponding government interventions have changed residents’ travel and mobility, and recent academic literatures suggests that this have had a positive impact on rural recreation. This study analyzed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural recreation from the perspective of population mobility, aiming to explore the changes in park visits during the pandemic, identify the motivation and demand of urban residents for leisure activities under the impact of the pandemic and to test the hypothesis of the accelerating the shift to rural recreation. Using the UK as the case study, it compared the park visits in four stages according to the COVID-19 policies: pre-, strict, eased, and fully lifted lockdown. Based on multivariate datasets, stepwise regression models of park visits in urban areas of 25 counties in the UK during each stage were con- structed and compared. The results showed that residents preferred to visit smaller parks before and in the early stage of the pandemic. In the strict lockdown stage, the movement of residents to parks decreased signifcantly. During the eased lockdown period, park visits increased signifcantly, but there was clear spatial variation across the country attributed to the severity of the pandemic in each region, and different control policies of local governments. During the period when the lockdown was fully lifted, the frequency of park visits remained an increasing trend compared to the baseline period but decreased slightly compared to the eased lockdown period due to the increasing number of park visitors and more crowded park sites. Obviously, residents were more willing to visit distant country parks after an extended period of lockdown control, and mainly congregated in dispersed recreation sites such as the wilderness and forests that were distributed outside of urban areas and farther away. This study broadens the related literature using the evidence from changes of park visits, which to some extent confrms that the pandemic accelerates the leisure activities taking place from urban to suburban parks. The results can provide new inspiration for the future research on rural recreation and tourism, and also provide guidelines for planning peri-urban rural parks to prepare for future public health crises along with the population shift tendency. 1. Introduction COVID-19 has been considered the most severe public health threat facing humanity in recent years (Chung et al., 2020), with more than 33 million people infected worldwide by the end of September 2020 (Johns Hopkins University, 2020) and 570,000 cumulative confrmed cases in the UK (UK Government, 2020a). According to statistical analysis, the UK was one of the hardest hit European countries by the pandemic (McGinlay et al., 2020). This has a substantial impact on multiple as- pects such as society, economy, and the everyday lives of citizens. During the COVID-19 pandemic, with the spread of the epidemic, governments issued and implemented a number of public intervention policies. Existing studies have proved that these policies, especially so- cial distancing measures, can affect people’s travel and recreation be- haviors (Pazicky, 2023), which greatly affects population mobility. In response to the rapid spread of the pandemic, the UK government released “Coronavirus: An Action Plan” on March 3, 2020, proposing a “four-part” action plan against the coronavirus to combat the virus on March 3, 2020 and offcially declared a three-week nationwide lock- down on March 23. During this period, schools, public dining, and entertainment venues were closed, public events were canceled, and travel restricted (UK Government, 2020b). The series of lockdown and * Corresponding author. E-mail address: zh.gou@whu.edu.cn (Z. Gou). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Rural Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103221 Received 23 March 2023; Received in revised form 5 December 2023; Accepted 15 January 2024