How long do voluntary lockdowns keep people at home? The role of social capital during the COVID-19 pandemic

Yuta Kuroda, Takaki Sato and Yasumasa Matsuda

No 125, DSSR Discussion Papers from Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University

Abstract: We create a city-by-day-level mobility index for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic from data on over 80 million mobile devices to analyze how social distancing compliance varies with social capital levels. We find that in the second year of the pandemic, both voluntary preventative activities and policy compliance were substantially reduced in areas with low levels of social capital but not in areas with high levels of social capital. Additionally, in Japan, mobility was clearly reduced among those supporting a majority party, and there is little heterogeneity by political preference as related to ideology or position. This suggests that valuing conformity with others is an important driver of behavior that is beneficial to the community.

Pages: 77 pages
Date: 2022-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict, nep-soc and nep-ure
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http://hdl.handle.net/10097/00135069

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:toh:dssraa:125

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