Effect of COVID-19 response policies on walking behavior in US cities
Name
s41467-021-23937-9.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.01 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
62b0dcd75babf3c71746b2da37c4633c
Author(s)
Hunter, Ruth F
Garcia, Leandro
de Sa, Thiago Herick
Zapata-Diomedi, Belen
Millett, Christopher
Woodcock, James
Pentland, Alex
Moro, Esteban
Date Issued
June 2021
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Hunter, Ruth F. "Effect of COVID-19 response policies on walking behavior in US cities." Nature Communications 12, 1 (June 2021): 3652. © 2021 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing mass disruption to our daily lives. We integrate mobility data from mobile devices and area-level data to study the walking patterns of 1.62 million anonymous users in 10 metropolitan areas in the United States. The data covers the period from mid-February 2020 (pre-lockdown) to late June 2020 (easing of lockdown restrictions). We detect when users were walking, distance walked and time of the walk, and classify each walk as recreational or utilitarian. Our results reveal dramatic declines in walking, particularly utilitarian walking, while recreational walking has recovered and even surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Our findings also demonstrate important social patterns, widening existing inequalities in walking behavior. COVID-19 response measures have a larger impact on walking behavior for those from low-income areas and high use of public transportation. Provision of equal opportunities to support walking is key to opening up our society and economy.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23937-9
