Compulsory face mask policies do not affect community mobility in Germany

Roxanne Kovacs, Maurice Dunaiski and Janne Tukiainen

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: There is currently a heated debate about whether to introduce policies requiring the general public to wear protective face masks to contain COVID-19. A key concern is that compulsory face mask policies will make the public feel safer (due to risk compensation), and may consequently undermine the most important public-health advice to contain COVID-19 – which is to reduce mobility and maintain social distancing. This study provides first evidence on the impact of compulsory face mask policies on community mobility. We use a difference-in-differences design, which exploits the staggered implementation of compulsory face mask policies by German states. We use anonymised GPS data from Google's Location History feature to measure daily mobility in public spaces (groceries and pharmacies, transport hubs and workplaces). We find no evidence that compulsory face mask policies affect community mobility in public spaces in Germany. The evidence provided in this paper makes a crucial contribution to ongoing debates about how to best manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; face masks; social distancing; community mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D9 H12 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/218945/1/C ... ermany_5june2020.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Compulsory face mask policies do not affect community mobility in Germany (2020)
Working Paper: Compulsory face mask policies do not affect community mobility in Germany (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:218945

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