Survey data regarding perceived air quality in Australia, Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Iran, Italy, Norway, South Africa, United States before and during Covid-19 restrictions

Abstract

The dataset deals with the air quality perceived by citizens before and during the enforcement of COVID-19 restrictions in ten countries around the world: Australia, Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Iran, Italy, Norway, South Africa and the United States. An online survey conveniently translated into Chinese, English, Italian, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese collected information regarding the perceived quality of air pollution according to a Likert scale. The questionnaire was distributed between 11-05-2020 and 31-05-2020 and 9 394 respondents took part. Both the survey and the dataset (stored in a Microsoft Excel Worksheet) are available in a public repository. The collected data offer the people's subjective perspectives related to the objective improvement in air quality occurred during the COVID-19 restrictions. Furthermore, the dataset can be used for research studies involving the reduction in air pollution as experienced, to a different extent, by populations of all the ten countries.

Environmental effects of stratospheric ozone depletion, UV radiation, and interactions with climate change: UNEP Environmental Effects Assessment Panel, Update 2020

“…These and other [ 583 – 585 ] observations will provide a valuable dataset to evaluate and improve air quality models [ 388 , 389 ]. Surveys show that most people have perceived a substantial improvement in air pollution during COVID-19 shutdown periods in many countries [ 586 ].…”

The psychological impact of COVID-19 and restrictive measures in the world

“…In addition to the stark consequences related to human health and individual well-being, the COVID-19 pandemic has also entailed several major effects encompassing society and environment, i.e. causing deep modifications related to individual mobility ( Barbieri et al., 2020a ; De Vos J., 2020 ; Wells et al., 2020 ) and environmental pollution ( Barbieri et al., 2020b ; Le Quéré et al., 2020 ; Shakil et al., 2020 ).…”

Air pollution perception in ten countries during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Respondents expressed their opinions according to a 7-point Likert-scale question with “1 = extremely low/absent air pollution” and “7 = extremely high air pollution”. The questionnaire also collected information regarding gender, age and education of the participants (Barbieri et al 2020b ).…”

“…Following previous psychometric investigations dealing with perceptions of air quality (Nikolopoulou et al 2011 ; Pu et al 2019 ; Reames and Bravo 2019 ) and psychological impacts on people’s Subjective Well-Being (Li et al 2018 ) by means of opinion surveys, this study captures the perceptions towards atmospheric quality related to before and during the enactment of the pandemic-related restrictions (Barbieri et al 2020b ).…”