Do Stay-at-Home Orders Cause People to Stay at Home? Effects of Stay-at-Home Orders on Consumer Behavior

Abstract

We link the county-level rollout of stay-at-home orders during the Covid-19 pandemic to anonymized cell phone records and consumer spending data. We document three patterns. First, stay-at-home orders caused people to stay home: county-level measures of mobility declined 6-7% within two days of when the stayat-home order went into effect. Second, stay-at-home orders caused large reductions in spending in sectors associated with mobility: small businesses and large retail chains. Third, we estimate fairly uniform responses to stay-at-home orders across the country; effects do not vary by county-level income, political leanings, or urban/rural status.

The COVID-19 shock and consumer credit: Evidence from credit card data

“…In the week of June 1, a one-unit increase in local NPI stringency was associated with a 0.23 percentage point reduction in spending, implying a 1.94 percentage point reduction in spending per one standard deviation cross-sectional increase in NPI stringency. These results are consistent with other studies that document an adverse effect of restrictive NPIs on consumer spending and economic activity ( Alexander, Karger, 2020 , Coibion, Gorodnichenko, Weber, 2020 , Friedson, McNichols, Sabia, Dave, 2020 ). However, and similar to the declining effect of pandemic severity shown in Figure 3 , there is also a weakening relation between local NPI stringency and credit card spending over time.…”

The COVID-19-wildfire smoke paradox: Reduced risk of all-cause mortality due to wildfire smoke in Colorado during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Older adults, who are more vulnerable to the adverse health effects of particulate matter and wildfire smoke exposure ( Liu et al, 2015 , 2015d eSouza et al, 2022 ), are also more vulnerable to COVID-19 and more likely to die as a result of infection ( Sharma, 2021 ; Shahid et al, 2020 ). However, stay-at-home orders during the pandemic, which were successful at reducing COVID-19 cases and deaths across the United States ( Fowler et al, 2021 ) reduced individual mobility ( Murray, 2021 ; Alexander and Karger, 2021 ), decreased physical activity, and increased recreational screen time ( Barr-Anderson et al, 2021 ), suggesting people spent more time indoors when under stay-at-home orders. Additionally, prior work in Colorado and elsewhere suggests that there may be important behavioral changes when wildfires are in close proximity.…”

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global GDP growth

“…Some researchers have adopted an event study framework, examining the movement of proxies for economic activity following lockdown announcements. For example, Alexander and Karger (2021) , utilizing US county-day level data, find that lockdown announcements were followed by declines in mobility 2 and small business revenue; however, these measures were falling even before the announcements, likely reflecting voluntary social distancing measures. Watanabe and Yabu (2021) use daily data from Japanese prefectures to show that emergency announcements increased the number of people staying at home, as did higher infection rates.…”