The impact of COVID-19 on mobility choices in Switzerland

Beat Hintermann, Beaumont Schoeman (), Joseph Molloy, Thomas Schatzmann, Christopher Tchervenkov and Kay W. Axhausen
Additional contact information
Beaumont Schoeman: University of Basel

Working papers from Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel

Abstract: We study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated government measures on individual mobility choices in Switzerland. Our data is based on over 1,600 people for which we observe all trips during eight weeks before the pandemic and until May 2021. We find an overall reduction of travel distances by 60 percent, followed by a gradual recovery during the subsequent re-opening of the economy. Whereas driving distances have almost completely recovered, public transport remains under-used. The introduction of a requirement to wear a mask in public transport had no measurable impact on ridership. The individual travel response to the pandemic varies along socio-economic dimensions such as education and household size, with mobility tool ownership, and with personal values and lifestyles. We find no evidence for a significant substitution of leisure travel to compensate for the reduction in work-related travel.

Keywords: COVID-19; transport; mobility; GPS tracking; causal forest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 H40 I18 R41 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea, nep-isf, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://edoc.unibas.ch/92343/3/2021_10_Impact_of_C ... ersion%202022.12.pdf (application/pdf)
https://edoc.unibas.ch/84537/ original version (application/pdf)
https://edoc.unibas.ch/92343/ revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of COVID-19 on mobility choices in Switzerland (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2021/10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WWZ ().