Effects of tourism promotion on COVID-19 spread: The case of the "Go To Travel" campaign in Japan.
J Transp Health
; 26: 101407, 2022 Sep.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1867437
ABSTRACT
Introduction:
On July 22, 2020, the Japanese government launched the "Go to Travel" campaign that subsidizes 50% of personal travel expenditure to support the tourism industry under the COVID-19 pandemic. This policy was controversial from the viewpoint of infection spread and was temporarily cancelled in December 2020, though there was no statistical evidence.Methods:
This is the first study that measures the extent to which this campaign increased COVID-19 cases. This study regards the campaign as a natural experiment although Tokyo and its commuting areas experienced the same time-series trends of COVID-19 cases before the "Go To Travel" campaign, this campaign was implemented in areas outside Tokyo, but not in Tokyo. Then, the comparison (difference-in-differences) yields the campaign's effect.Results:
The estimation shows that the "Go To Travel" campaign significantly raised the increment rate of cases by 23.7%-34.4% during July 30-August 4. There is no significant effect after August 5. In addition, our simulation identified the number of campaign-related cases in each city.Conclusions:
Although the campaign significantly spread COVID-19, the effect was not continuous to permanently change the time-series trend.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
Language:
English
Journal:
J Transp Health
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
J.jth.2022.101407
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