The panorama of public officials’ meeting trips after the COVID-19 pandemic: Impact level, recovery, and prospects

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about considerable changes to human mobility. Although circulation restrictions are being lifted worldwide following the mitigation of the crisis, the understanding of its long-term effects is still limited. This paper addresses the situation of business meeting trips made by public officials in Brazil by gauging the level shift in the number of trips, the pace of recovery in the aftermath and whether there is any perspective of returning to a pre-pandemic baseline in the near future. To answer these questions, more than 420,000 trips comprising 5 years of operation of the “TaxiGov” ridesourcing system were evaluated in the framework of a dynamic regression model based on an Interrupted Time Series analysis with Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average errors. We found that the baseline level of meeting trips plummeted more than 80% with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented effect that was not matched by any major external shock in recent human history. Based on a counterfactual scenario, more than 138,000 expected trips did not occur considering only the first year of the pandemic (April 2020 to March 2021), which is roughly three times as much as the actual number of trips in the same period. Furthermore, based on the time series’ characteristics, a forecast for the following year indicates that the number of business trips will be still behind the baseline figures of 2018 and 2019. We provide solid evidence that the COVID-19 might have produced longstanding (and perhaps irreversible) effects in business meeting trips in the Brazilian public sector. Important policies implemented throughout this period, such as the regulation of teleworking in the public sector, and the incorporation of new working habits after an extended period of adaptation are probably the main reasons behind these findings. Finally, we emphasize that the reduced environmental impacts ensuing from this decreased mobility could be further expanded by substituting car trips with microbus/van lines serving the main origin-destination trip pairs or by adding ridesharing/carpooling options within the existing ride sourcing system.

Travel behavior and activity resilience regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil: An approach based on smartphone panel data

“…In this context, several studies ( Aloi et al, 2020 , Beck et al, 2020 , De Haas et al, 2020 , De Vos, 2020 , Jenelius and Cebecauer, 2020 , Lucchesi et al, 2022 , Molloy et al, 2020 , Parady et al, 2020 , Pedreira Junior et al, 2022 , Rodrigues da Silva et al, 2023 , Shamshiripour et al, 2020 ) have been carried out to understand the impact of the SARS-COV2 virus and the pandemic on travel behavior. The first sector to suffer the impacts of these measures was the tourism sector, thus it was in this area that the first studies emerged.…”

Explorando a heterogeneidade das mudanças nos padrões de mobilidade ao longo da pandemia da COVID-19: uma análise baseada em cadeias de Markov latentes em um painel de 3 anos

“…Apesar de diversas pesquisas terem respondido a algumas perguntas importantes nesse contexto, poucos estudos modelaram essa trajetória dessas mudanças em um período mais prolongado, incluindo fases mais recentes (Lee e Eom, 2023). Para aqueles que assim o fizeram, à exceção de alguns estudos que analisaram dados coletados até o primeiro semestre de 2022 (Chen et al, 2023;Faber et al, 2023b;Pedreira Junior et al, 2022), a maior parte não mediu o comportamento em um período posterior a 2021, ano em que as taxas de vacinação ainda estavam em progresso e nem todas as medidas de controle sanitário haviam sido removidas.…”

“…Apesar de seu número limitado, pesquisas usando dados em painel e abrangendo fases mais recentes da pandemia já lançaram luz sobre alguns impactos de curto e médio prazo. Esses estudos usaram diversos métodos de coleta de dados, a exemplo de questionários virtuais, diários de atividade-viagem, visitação a pontos de interesse, rastreamento por GPS de smartphones, dados secundários oriundos do setor público ou uma combinação destes (Bouzaghrane et al, 2022;Chen e Steiner, 2022;Chen et al, 2023;Faber et al, 2023aFaber et al, , 2023bHensher et al, 2023;Hintermann et al, 2023;Javadinasr et al, 2022;Magassy et al, 2023;Mohammadi et al, 2022;Okubo, 2022;Pedreira Junior et al, 2022;Pedreira Junior e Pitombo, 2024;Rostami et al, 2023;Salon et al, 2022;Xi et al, 2023).…”

“…Por exemplo, no Distrito Federal, 31,5% dos empregos são passíveis de teletrabalho, enquanto apenas 15,6% dos trabalhadores do estado do Piauí podem trabalhar remotamente (Góes et al, 2020). Essas diferenças refletem grandes disparidades socioeconômicas entre esses estados, principalmente associadas a um maior nível de empregos informais presentes no Piauí (Rodrigues da e um maior PIB per capita e concentração de funcionários públicos no Distrito Federal, cuja mobilidade foi consideravelmente afetada pela pandemia (Pedreira Junior et al, 2022).…”

Análise do comportamento individual relativo a viagens em períodos distintos da pandemia da COVID-19, a partir de dados em painel

“…Segundo Shamshiripour et al (2020), as circunstâncias únicas introduzidas pela pandemia fizeram com que muitos reexaminassem seus hábitos e prioridades, causando alterações consideráveis na maneira como as pessoas realizam suas tarefas diárias. Neste contexto, diversas pesquisas (Aloi et al, 2020;De Haas et al, 2020;De Vos, 2020;Jenelius e Cebecauer, 2020;Molloy et al, 2020;Parady et al, 2020;Shamshiripour et al, 2020;Costa et al, 2022;Dias et al, 2022;Pedreira Junior et al, 2022;Rodrigues da Silva et al, 2023) vêm sendo realizadas para compreender o impacto do vírus SARS-COV2 e da pandemia no comportamento de viagens.…”