The Impact of COVID-19 Lockdowns on the Behavior of Italian Citizens and Particulate Matter 10 and 2.5 Emissions in Lombardy
Authors: Rovetta Alessandro 
Published: December 2020

AbstractItaly has been one of the first nations in the world to be heavily affected by the first wave of COVID-19. To date, it is among the first countries for both total cases of contagion and deaths. A wide range of containment measures have been adopted from February to December 2020 to mitigate the pandemic, including total lockdowns across the entire country. This research sets out to evaluate not only how these restrictions influenced Italian citizens’ consumption habits (such as online shopping, smart working and distance learning) but also the impact of lockdowns on the concentrations of particulate matter (PM) 10 and 2.5 in the Lombardy region. In particular, this survey is aimed at investigating the environmental sustainability of the new individual behaviors after the restrictions imposed by the Government in order to quantify their effects on particulate concentrations in Lombardy, the region most damaged by both COVID-19 and air pollution. Various tools and online platforms have been used to collect data, such as Google Trends, web portals providing statistical and demographic information (e.g. AdminStat Italia and ISTAT, which is the National Institute of Statistics), surveys conducted by the Department of Civil Protection, other scientific studies, and the most reliable national newspapers. Technical data on particulate matter was collected from the website of the Regional Agency for the Protection of the Environment (ARPA). To highlight any significant change, the average daily concentrations of PM10 and 2.5 during 2020 in all the provinces of Lombardy were compared with those of the previous year. The comparison between the mean values was made through the t-test. Two values were considered as statistically confident when t < 1.5. However, since the real significance of these thresholds is not easily determined, some margins of suspicious confidence have been kept. Finally, using Pearson and Spearman correlations, possible causal correlations between changes in citizens’ behavior and specific key events related to COVID-19 have been dealt with. The P-value threshold was indicatively set at 0.05. Microsoft Excel 2020 and Google Sheets were used as data analysis software. In conclusion, this paper showed a substantial ineffectiveness of total and partial lockdowns in reducing PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations in Lombardy. Furthermore, it has been estimated that COVID-19 has significantly changed the consumption habits of Italian citizens, thus leading to both positive and negative results in terms of sustainability. For instance, a sharp rise in the usage of home delivery services is posing a potential additional threat to the environment at present. At the same time, a positive aspect of this change is the spread of digital literacy, as Italians got quickly acquainted with the most modern technologies for distant learning and smart working, thus paving the way for the establishment of energetically and environmentally sustainable policies throughout the country.