COVID-19 Pandemic Severity, Lockdown Regimes, and People’s Mobility: Early Evidence from 88 Countries

Md. Mokhlesur Rahman, Jean-Claude Thill and Kamal Chandra Paul
Additional contact information
Md. Mokhlesur Rahman: Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Khulna University of Engineering & Technology, Khulna 9203, Bangladesh
Jean-Claude Thill: Department of Geography and Earth Sciences and School of Data Science, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA
Kamal Chandra Paul: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The William States Lee College of Engineering, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 21, 1-17

Abstract: This study empirically investigates the complex interplay between the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, mobility changes in retail and recreation, transit stations, workplaces, and residential areas, and lockdown measures in 88 countries around the world during the early phase of the pandemic. To conduct the study, data on mobility patterns, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of people, lockdown measures, and coronavirus pandemic were collected from multiple sources (e.g., Google, UNDP, UN, BBC, Oxford University, Worldometer). A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) framework is used to investigate the direct and indirect effects of independent variables on dependent variables considering the intervening effects of mediators. Results show that lockdown measures have significant effects to encourage people to maintain social distancing so as to reduce the risk of infection. However, pandemic severity and socioeconomic and institutional factors have limited effects to sustain social distancing practice. The results also explain that socioeconomic and institutional factors of urbanity and modernity have significant effects on pandemic severity. Countries with a higher number of elderly people, employment in the service sector, and higher globalization trend are the worst victims of the coronavirus pandemic (e.g., USA, UK, Italy, and Spain). Social distancing measures are reasonably effective at tempering the severity of the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; lockdown; social distancing; mobility; SEM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/9101/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/9101/ (text/html)

Related works:
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:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:21:p:9101-:d:438595

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().