Human behavior is notoriously difficult to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring about long-term behavioral changes. During the pandemic, people have been forced to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. A critical question going forward is how these experiences have actually changed preferences and habits in ways that might persist after the pandemic ends. Many observers have suggested theories about what the future will bring, but concrete evidence has been lacking. We present evidence on how much US adults expect their own postpandemic choices to differ from their prepandemic lifestyles in the areas of telecommuting, restaurant patronage, air travel, online shopping, transit use, car commuting, uptake of walking and biking, and home location. The analysis is based on a nationally representative survey dataset collected between July and October 2020. Key findings include that the “new normal” will feature a doubling of telecommuting, reduced air travel, and improved quality of life for some.

This study identifies differences in COVID-19 related attitudes and risk perceptions among urban, rural, and suburban populations in the US using data from an online, nationwide survey collected during April-October 2020. In general, rural respondents were found to be less concerned by the pandemic and a lower proportion of rural respondents support staying at home and shutting down businesses. While only about half of rural respondents are concerned about getting severe reactions themselves from COVID-19 (compared to ~60% for urban and suburban respondents), all place types respondents are concerned about friends or family members getting severe reactions (~75%).

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted billions of people around the world. To capture some of these impacts in the United States, we are conducting a nationwide longitudinal survey collecting information about activity and travel-related behaviors and attitudes before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey questions cover a wide range of topics including commuting, daily travel, air travel, working from home, online learning, shopping, and risk perception, along with attitudinal, socioeconomic, and demographic information. The survey is deployed over multiple waves to the same respondents to monitor how behaviors and attitudes evolve over time. Version 1.0 of the survey contains 8,723 responses that are publicly available. This article details the methodology adopted for the collection, cleaning, and processing of the data. In addition, the data are weighted to be representative of national and regional demographics. This survey dataset can aid researchers, policymakers, businesses, and government agencies in understanding both the extent of behavioral shifts and the likelihood that changes in behaviors will persist after COVID-19.

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The utility of attitudes in travel demand forecasting requires predictability. Any attempt to simulate future attitudes, as is done in such models, would be impractical if they were subject to substantial unpredictable variation over time. We investigate the stability of attitudes using waves of the COVID Future survey answered 3.5-11 months apart. Attitudinal statements have moderate stability while factor-analyzed attitudes demonstrate moderately high stability. This stability is consistent across demographic groups. Attitudes about COVID-19 are particularly stable, while those about remote work and communication are more unstable. We conclude that attitudes display enough stability over 6 months to be useful.

This article uses data from the first wave of the COVID Future Panel study to evaluate attitudes towards COVID-19 and their influence on traveler behaviors. An exploratory factor analysis identified two underlying constructs based on the measured attitudes, namely "Concern about Pandemic Response" and "COVID Health Concern." A cluster analysis based on the factor scores yielded four groups with distinct attitudes. Those primarily concerned about the pandemic response traveled the most using private vehicles, while those equally concerned about the response to the pandemic and the health effects of COVID-19 were found to use personal bicycles and transit the most. QuestionsThis article investigates the relationship between attitudes toward COVID-19 and traveler behavior, particularly focusing on mode use and activity engagement during the pandemic. While attitudes toward COVID-19 have already been identified as affecting current and expected post-pandemic behaviors (Conway et al. 2020;, this study explicitly distinguishes between and focuses on concerns about the response to the pandemic (as in a feeling that society is over-reacting and the economic impacts of shutting down are not justified) and health concerns about having a severe reaction to COVID.The analysis in this article identified Concern about Pandemic Response and COVID Health Concern as two different attitudinal constructs. The research addresses how these COVID-19 attitudinal constructs are associated with traveler behaviors observed during the pandemic. MethodsThis study uses data from the first wave of the COVID Future Panel Survey (Salon et al. 2021;Chauhan, Conway, et al. 2021). The sample includes 7,593 respondents from across the United States (US) who completed the survey between June and October 2020 (Wave 1b). The data were weighted to replicate national distributions of age, education, gender, Hispanic status, household income, presence of children, and number of household vehicles. Importantly, the weighting methodology adjusted for the marginal distributions without inflating the sample size (for more information, please refer to Chauhan, Conway, et al. 2021).

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