Variability in Human Mobility during the Third Wave of COVID-19 in Japan

Abstract

Understanding factors regarding individual variability in human mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic would help inform future political and medical decisions. Particularly, understanding environmental factors would provide effective evidence for future urban development and the construction of a mobility service. Given the limited related evidence thus far, we investigated inter-individual variability in human mobility regarding life space during COVID-19 in Japan. We conducted an online survey to assess human mobility, demographics, and personality, and city structure surveys for objective environmental factors. Human mobility was assessed using the Life Space Assessment (LSA) questionnaire. Result revealed that the total LSA score was significantly higher in people who were men, middle-aged, working, living with their children, public transportation users, bicycle users, and car drivers, and those having a higher score for extraversion and ego resiliency and a lower score for conscientiousness. People living in the city with high traffic on the roads between plains and mountains had a higher LSA score, and had a lower score where there were many plains with a consistent road density, revealing diverse individual and environmental factors associated with human mobility during the pandemic. Thus, political decisions for urban development should consider these characteristics, the pandemic, and individual convenience.

Public Transport COVID-19-Safe: New Barriers and Policies to Implement Effective Countermeasures under User’s Safety Perspective

“…Still, some authors have attempted to understand public transport satisfaction after the COVID-19 pandemic [23]. Other several studies evaluated the impact of COVID-19 on the sustainability of the transport system and human mobility [24][25][26][27][28][29][30].…”

User's Activities when Using Mobility as a Service — Results of the Smart Mobility Challenge Project 2020 and 2021 —

“…AIST joined this project in 2020 and conducted a fundamental cross-regional analysis of this project. This chapter describes an overview of this project and the content and results of the cross-regional analysis in 2020 and 2021 [15][16][17][18].…”

“…The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) joined this project in 2020. Nomura Research Institute, Nippon Koei, and AIST played the role of the project's secretariat from 2020 and conducted crossregional analysis because the secretariat could use all the regional data for analysis [15][16][17][18]. In this paper, we will describe the introduction of the 2020 and MaaS projects and their results by focusing on these projects' crossregional analysis in Japan.…”

Deviations in Traffic Flow Characteristics Caused by the Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…& Stern, 2021). Understanding the change in mobility during the third wave of the pandemic was addressed by a survey in Japan that showed the difference between public transport users living in cities and car drivers (Ando, et al, 2021).…”