Measuring voluntary and policy-induced social distancing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

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.

Effect of specific non-pharmaceutical intervention policies on SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the counties of the United States

“…We assumed a stable distribution of delays between infection and the time of confirmation or death, though this could have varied over the course of the outbreak 20 . Not all behavioral change is captured by concrete policies (e.g., voluntary behavior in response to the locally reported cases, which can be displaced by the mandate orders 21 ); however, our focus was on the possible impact of policies enacted by governments rather than actions taken by individuals in the absence of such policies.…”

Spatial Disparities of COVID-19 Cases and Fatalities in United States Counties

“…Yet, Berry et al [47] found little evidence to support that shelter-in-place orders affected disease spread or fatalities. Comparisons of voluntary mitigative actions versus mandatory stay-at-home orders found that, in counties with existing voluntary behaviors, the mandates simply accelerated compliance [48]. However, not all sociodemographic groups have the social or economic capital available to partake in voluntary mitigative action and can thus suffer worse economic burdens from such imposed mitigation orders [49].…”

Co-distribution of Light At Night (LAN) and COVID-19 incidence in the United States

“…In states with strict restriction policies, people spent much more time at home and made less movement during the pandemic, including traveling, recreation, grocery shopping, etc. ; and much less people moved between different cities and states [27][28][29]. The less strict policies may introduce more social factors into the analysis that we cannot determine easily at this point.…”