Measuring voluntary and policy-induced social distancing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
; 118(16)2021 04 20.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1169445
ABSTRACT
Staying home and avoiding unnecessary contact is an important part of the effort to contain COVID-19 and limit deaths. Every state in the United States enacted policies to encourage distancing and some mandated staying home. Understanding how these policies interact with individuals' voluntary responses to the COVID-19 epidemic is a critical initial step in understanding the role of these nonpharmaceutical interventions in transmission dynamics and assessing policy impacts. We use variation in policy responses along with smart device data that measures the amount of time Americans stayed home to disentangle the extent that observed shifts in staying home behavior are induced by policy. We find evidence that stay-at-home orders and voluntary response to locally reported COVID-19 cases and deaths led to behavioral change. For the median county, which implemented a stay-at-home order with about two cases, we find that the response to stay-at-home orders increased time at home as if the county had experienced 29 additional local cases. However, the relative effect of stay-at-home orders was much greater in select counties. On the one hand, the mandate can be viewed as displacing a voluntary response to this rise in cases. On the other hand, policy accelerated the response, which likely helped reduce spread in the early phase of the pandemic. It is important to be able to attribute the relative role of self-interested behavior or policy mandates to understand the limits and opportunities for relying on voluntary behavior as opposed to imposing stay-at-home orders.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Behavior
/
Pandemics
/
Physical Distancing
/
COVID-19
/
Health Policy
Type of study:
Observational study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS