ABSTRACT
This paper explores transportation mode choice patterns of a population in Latin America before and during the COVID-19 pandemic based on survey data from the city of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). An online survey consisting of two waves was conducted between April and June 2020 among randomly chosen transport system users. The survey consisted of both a stated choice experiment, revealed preference, and psychometric indicators. Hybrid choice models were developed and included two latent variables (1) satisfaction with public transport and (2) the response to COVID-19. The results indicate that there is a strong habit of private vehicle use in the Dominican population. The main deterrents for public transport use are limited capacity and reduced safety (including regarding social distancing). The findings particularly highlight the success of the metro as a public transport mode in the city of Santo Domingo. Both cost and time are significant factors in mode choice, before and during the pandemic, but more so for OMSA bus use than for metro use. One of the conclusions from this study is that ignorin covid-related latent effects on public transport service during the pandemic may yield biased (lower) estimations of Value of Travel Time Savings. Finally, the results also show that mode captivity for public transport users plays an important role during the pandemic. These users have no access to alternative transportation and are obliged to continue using public transport. This implies that governments would be wise to urge transport operators not to reduce capacity and frequency during the pandemic.
ABSTRACT
This paper studies the causes of household liquidity constraints in China, the inhibiting impact of liquidity constraints on aggregate demand, and the amplifying effect of liquidity constraints on the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the China family panel studies (CFPS) 2010-2018 and Internet survey data during the pandemic, we analyze the impact of the "income effect" caused by income decline and the "debt overhang effect" caused by real estate boom on household liquidity constraints. Furthermore, we also explore the amplifying effect of liquidity constraints on negative demand shocks during the pandemic. We find that, liquidity of Chinese households had been gradually deteriorating before the pandemic, specially, from 2010 to 2018, the ratio of China's households who were subject to liquidity constraint was increasing from 24.37% to 35.31%. For the middle-income class, compared with the "income effect", the "debt overhang effect" is more significant, and is the main driver of making households possibly subject to liquidity constraints. Meanwhile, liquidity constraints significantly affect consumption, compared with households without liquidity constraints, households with liquidity constraints decrease their consumption by 6.9%. To the amplifying effect of liquidity constraints on the impact of pandemic, we find that, compared with homeowners without mortgage, homeowners with mortgage and households without housing both reduced more consumption, saved more, are also more likely to fall into liquidity constraints, and more conservative on consumption in the second half of 2020. This paper not only provides a new explanation for the sluggish consumption in China, but also provides a basis for demand-side reform. © 2022, Editorial Board of Journal of Systems Engineering Society of China. All right reserved.
ABSTRACT
This paper studies the effect of the economic impact payment (EIP) on individual contributions to COVID-19 mitigation efforts in the USA, where the mitigation efforts are measured by the reduction of daily human mobility. I empirically estimate the effect of the EIP in April 2020 and use cellphone GPS data of 45 million smartphone devices as a proxy for human mobility across 216,069 Census Block Groups. The results show that when receiving the EIP, households significantly increased "Median Home Dwell Time" by an average of 3-5% (about 26-45 min). The paper highlights this unintended effect of the EIP, namely, that in addition to providing economic assistance, the EIP also helped increase individual contributions to mitigation efforts that slowed COVID-19 virus transmission in early 2020. Supplementary Information: The online version supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00181-021-02117-0.
ABSTRACT
In recent years, air pollution has received serious concerns from researchers, media, and the public sectors, but air pollution from agricultural production activities has not received enough attention. This paper focuses on agricultural air pollution in central China, which is aggravated by the ongoing rural labor migration trend. With a set of panel data released from Hubei and Hunan provinces in China, we adopt the mediating effect model to explore the relationship between rural labor migration and air pollution caused by agricultural activity in China. First, we use the inventory analysis method and principal component analysis method to calculate the comprehensive index of the air pollution of agriculture in 152 counties and districts from Hubei and Hunan provinces, and we empirically test the impact of labor migration on air pollution with a mediating effect model as well as carry out regional heterogeneity analysis on the pollution effect of these two provinces mentioned above. The analysis above indicates that the increase of labor migration has intensified the comprehensive index of air pollution caused by agricultural activity by changing the supply of labor force in the agricultural sector, the budget line of rural residents, and the scale of agricultural production and crop planting structure, but there is a difference in the indirect total effect between the two provinces mentioned above according to our regional heterogeneity analysis. This study is a necessary extension to studies on alleviating and controlling air pollution in China.