COVID-19 impact on municipal parks & recreation: experiences, challenges & strategies

The COVID-19 pandemic created numerous health, economic, and social challenges within communities throughout the United States. During this time, parks and recreation agencies and providers were tasked like never before with serving in essential service roles and promoting physical, mental, and social health within the communities they serve. At the same time, parks and recreation agencies faced numerous operational and financial challenges and had to implement innovative new programming strategies to meet the needs of their communities. This thesis first provides a comprehensive review of the existing parks and recreation literature on challenges parks and recreation agencies faced during the pandemic and strategies they implemented to overcome these challenges. To expand upon the existing literature, this thesis used data from the Office of Recreation and Park Resources’ COVID-19 Organizational Resilience and Recovery Survey, a study of 73 parks and recreation leaders across Illinois. This study examined whether the size of the community a parks and recreation agency served had an effect on the operational challenges, financial challenges and programming strategies implemented during the first year of the pandemic. The sample was divided into “smaller communities” (40,000 or less residents) and “larger communities” (40,001+ residents). Ten operational challenges, six financial challenges, and 6 programming strategies were assessed using chi-square analysis. No statistically significant findings (p < .05) were observed in this study. While many of the challenges measured in this study had a significant effect on agencies, and a majority of agencies incorporated the programming strategies measured, the size of community the agency served had no statistically significant effect on responses, thus showing the widespread effect of COVID-19 on agencies.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Recreation, Sport, and Tourism

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• McGrath, Ryan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shinew, Kimberly

• COVID-19
• Parks and recreation
• coronavirus

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Ryan McGrath

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115405

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115405