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The impact of COVID-19 on trips to urban amenities: Examining travel behavior changes in Somerville, MA.

ABSTRACT: While there has been much speculation on how the pandemic has affected work location patterns and home location choices, there is sparse evidence regarding the impacts that COVID-19 has had on amenity visits in American cities, which typically constitute over half of all urban trips. Using aggregate app-based GPS positioning data from smartphone users, this study traces the changes in amenity visits in Somerville, MA from January 2019 to December 2020, describing how visits to particular types of amenities have changed as a result of business closures during the public health emergency. Has the pandemic fundamentally shifted amenity-oriented travel behavior or is consumer behavior returning to pre-pandemic trends? To address this question, we calibrate discrete choice models that are suited to Census block-group level analysis for each of the 24 months in a two-year period, and use them to analyze how visitors' behavioral responses to various attributes of amenity clusters have shifted during different phases of the pandemic. Our findings suggest that in the first few months of the pandemic, amenity-visiting preferences significantly diverged from expected patterns. Even though overall trip volumes remained far below normal levels throughout the remainder of the year, preferences towards specific cluster attributes mostly returned to expected levels by September 2020. We also construct two scenarios to explore the implications of another shutdown and a full reopening, based on November 2020 consumer behavior. While government restrictions have played an important role in reducing visits to amenity clusters, our results imply that cautionary consumer behavior has played an important role as well, suggesting a likely long and slow path to economic recovery. By drawing on mobile phone location data and behavioral modeling, this paper offers timely insights to help decision-makers understand how this unprecedented health emergency is affecting amenity-related trips and where the greatest needs for intervention and support may exist.

SUBMITTER: Sevtsuk A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8409662 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Accessible urban nature is a key component of creating sustainable urban communities and promoting human health and well-being. To balance the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, the United Nations adopted several sustainable developmental goals (SDGs), such as SDG 11 for sustainable cities and communities, which aims to improve urban planning and management, including equitable access to urban nature. However, more information is still needed regarding how planners and managers can promote urban nature visitation and equitable access during health and environmental crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to examine trends in urban nature visitation during the pandemic and then to determine if the effect of the pandemic on the frequency of urban nature site visitation varied by distance to home, using an innovative approach of analyzing both publicly available large-scale mobility data and a web-based survey of urban residents of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. The mobility data results showed that there was a negative mean % difference in park visits compared to baseline during the first and third lockdowns, but an increase compared to baseline between lockdowns and even during the second lockdown. This suggests that urban residents had greater need to reconnect with urban nature during and after periods of intense stress. In addition, the survey results showed an increasing negative effect of distance on urban nature site visitation during the pandemic, specifically for urban nature sites located more than 1 km from home. Altogether, the mobility data and survey results suggest that people who lived within 1 km of their preferred urban nature site had disproportionate access to the benefits of urban nature during and after lockdowns than others. To effectively make social and ecological transitions toward urban sustainability, it is vital that cities promote urban nature accessibility during current and future environmental and health crises. Cities should collaborate with diverse stakeholders to create/maintain accessible urban nature sites nearby all sociodemographic groups, provide sustainability education and training to convey the benefits of urban nature, and pursue participatory solutions for understanding urban nature needs and preferences. In this manner, it will be possible to address the growing influence of proximity/travel distance and additional factors that affect urban nature visitation and ultimately, human health and urban sustainability.

Dataset Information

The impact of COVID-19 on trips to urban amenities: Examining travel behavior changes in Somerville, MA.

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