No going back: COVID-19 disease threat perception and male migrants' willingness to return to work in India
Varun Arora,
Sujoy Chakravarty,
Hansika Kapoor,
Shagata Mukherjee,
Shubhabrata Roy and
Anirudh Tagat ()
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 209, issue C, 533-546
Abstract:
This paper explores the causal link between the likelihood of re-migration to cities and the perceived threat of contracting COVID-19 using novel data on male reverse migrant workers in India. We find that reverse-migrants who believe there is a significant chance of contracting COVID-19 display a significantly lower likelihood of returning to their urban workplaces, regardless of their duration of migration. On the other hand, longer-duration migrants display a lower perceived chance of contracting COVID-19 than shorter-duration migrants. We also contribute to the migration literature by linking behavioural attributes to the decision to migrate. We find that more impatient individuals display a heightened belief regarding contracting COVID-19 and a higher projected likelihood of returning to work. Finally, we find that while both loss and risk-averse individuals have a lower projected likelihood of returning to urban workplaces, only loss-averse individuals perceive that their chance of contracting COVID-19 is lower.
Keywords: Covid-19; Behavioural economics; Internal migration; Risk perception; Health information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I12 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:209:y:2023:i:c:p:533-546
DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.03.017
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