Air pollution and health: study of citizen’s attitudes and behaviours using multiple sources

Background In Italy, in December 2015 and January 2016, the routine air monitoring showed a peak of pollution (PM10 in particular) that caused alarm in many cities and was widely reported by mass media. After some weeks from this alarm, we tried to understand the people awareness towards air pollution and their positive behaviors, using different sources of information. Methods A questionnaire, asking attitudes and behaviours related to air pollution, was administered during an educational program in the context of EU funded MAPEC-life project. Parallel, a quantitative and qualitative analysis was performed on Internet search query data, on newspapers (two national and two local) and on Twitter. These two last kind of sources were collected and analyzed with qualitative analysis software. Results The media coverage of the theme of air pollution was very high at the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016, with 1.721newspaper articles published in December-January, followed by a decay in interest (321 in February-March). The same trend was observed also in the internet searches (26.200 vs 6800) and in Twitter. The 57.69% of respondents believe that they can play high role in reducing air pollution but attribute the most important role to the political and environmental protection institutions. The percentage of adopting positive behaviours(always or sometimes) ranged from 91.69% for separate collections of waste to 33.24% for use of public transport. The major obstacles against the adoption of positive behaviours were high costs and the lack of time (33.29%) and of institutional support (27.52%). Finally, participants consider relevant the role of children in promoting positive behaviours in the family (57.31%). Conclusions The study can be useful for future program of citizen education, but further research are needed on the perceived obstacles against positive behaviours.