Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mobility in ten countries and associated perceived risk for all transport modes

Barbieri, DM and Lou, B and Passavanti, M and Hui, C and Hoff, I and Lessa, DA and Sikka, G and Chang, K and Gupta, A and Fang, K and Banerjee, A and Maharaj, B and Lam, L and Ghasemi, N and Naik, B and Wang, F and Mirhosseini, AF and Naseri, S and Liu, Z and Qiao, Y and Tucker, A and Wijayaratna, K and Peprah, P and Adomako, S and Yu, L and Goswami, S and Chen, H and Shu, B and Hessami, A and Abbas, M and Agarwal, N and Rashidi, TH (2021) Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mobility in ten countries and associated perceived risk for all transport modes. In: PLoS ONE, 16 (2 Febr).

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Abstract

The restrictive measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered sudden massive changes to travel behaviors of people all around the world. This study examines the individual mobility patterns for all transport modes (walk, bicycle, motorcycle, car driven alone, car driven in company, bus, subway, tram, train, airplane) before and during the restrictions adopted in ten countries on six continents: Australia, Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Iran, Italy, Norway, South Africa and the United States. This cross-country study also aims at understanding the predictors of protective behaviors related to the transport sector and COVID-19. Findings hinge upon an online survey conducted in May 2020 (N = 9,394). The empirical results quantify tremendous disruptions for both commuting and non-commuting travels, highlighting substantial reductions in the frequency of all types of trips and use of all modes. In terms of potential virus spread, airplanes and buses are perceived to be the riskiest transport modes, while avoidance of public transport is consistently found across the countries. According to the Protection Motivation Theory, the study sheds new light on the fact that two indicators, namely income inequality, expressed as Gini index, and the reported number of deaths due to COVID-19 per 100,000 inhabitants, aggravate respondents� perceptions. This research indicates that socio-economic inequality and morbidity are not only related to actual health risks, as well documented in the relevant literature, but also to the perceived risks. These findings document the global impact of the COVID-19 crisis as well as provide guidance for transportation practitioners in developing future strategies. © 2021 Barbieri et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	PLoS ONE
Publisher:	Public Library of Science
Additional Information:	The copyright of this article belongs to Public Library of Science
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Civil Engineering
Date Deposited:	05 Mar 2021 10:38
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2021 10:38
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/68103

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