The Role of Neighborhood Environmental Quality in Maintaining the Citizens' Mental Health during the Covid-19 Epidemic, Case Study: Kermanshah City

Following the outbreak of Covid-19 disease in late 2019 and the adoption of policies such as home quarantine, telecommuting, home-based education and other similar measures, concerns was raised about the negative consequences of these measures on the society mental health. Therefore, the present study seeks to analyze the role of environmental quality in urban areas in maintaining the citizens’ mental health during the Covid-19 epidemic. The research method is analytical-interpretive and based on documentary studies and field survey. In the first step, the main environmental variables at the neighborhood scale were extracted from valid articles to be used to compile a questionnaire. The Dass-21 standard questionnaire was also used to assess the mental health of individuals. The statistical population includes citizens of Kermanshah, and 200 people were randomly selected as a sample. The validity of the environmental quality questionnaire has been confirmed by receiving the opinion of urban planning experts and its reliability has been confirmed with Cronbach's alpha test. Then, the data obtained from the questionnaires were entered into SPSS software and evaluated using exploratory factor analysis and focal correlation analysis. Findings show that the environmental quality categories into 5 factors: "Functional Structure", "Environmental Comfort", "Quality of Urban Space", "Visual Image" and "Social scape". Also, the output of the focal correlation analysis confirms the existence of a correlation between environmental factors and mental health. According to the findings, during the Covid-19 epidemic, the two factors "Functional Structure" and "Visual Image" had the most relationship with the society mental health. This research is particularly important because the repetition of risks similar to future Covid-19 epidemics is not unexpected. At the same time, in Iran, not much research has been done, especially with a quantitative nature and based on valid statistical models.