Social distancing across vulnerability, race, politics, and employment: How different Americans changed behaviors before and after major COVID-19 policy announcements
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Abstract
Background
As states reopen in May 2020, the United States is still trying to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. To appropriately design policies and anticipate behavioral change, it is important to understand how different Americans’ social distancing behavior shifts in relation to policy announcements according to individual characteristics, and community vulnerability.
Methods
This cross-sectional study used Unacast’s social distancing data from February 24th - May 10th, 2020 to study how social distancing changed before and after: 1) The World Health Organization’s declaration of a global pandemic, 2) White House announcement of “Opening Up America Again” (OUAA) guidelines, and 3) the week of April 27 when several states reopened. To measure intention to social distance, we assessed the difference between weekday and weekend behavior as more individuals have more control over weekend leisure time. To investigate social distancing’s sensitivity to different population characteristics, we compared social distancing time-series data across county vulnerability as measured by the COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI) which defines vulnerability across socioeconomic, household composition, minority status, epidemiological, and healthcare-system related factors. We also compared social distancing across population groupings by race, 2016 presidential election voting choice, and employment sectors.
Results
Movement reduced significantly throughout March reaching peak reduction on April 12th (-56.1%) prior the enactment of any reopening policies. Shifts in social distancing began after major announcements but prior to specific applied policies: Following the WHO declaration, national social distancing significantly increased on weekdays and weekends (-18.6% and -41.3% decline in mobility, respectively). Social distancing significantly declined on weekdays and weekends after OUAA guidelines (i.e. before state reopening) (+1.1% and +5.3% increase in mobility, respectively) with additional significant decline after state reopening (+10.0% and +20.9% increase in mobility, respectively). Social distancing was significantly greater on weekends than weekdays throughout March, however, the trend reversed by early May with significantly less social distancing on weekends, suggesting a shift in intent to social distance during leisure time. In general, vulnerable counties social distanced less than non-vulnerable counties, and had a greater difference between weekday and weekend behavior until state reopening. This may be driven by structural barriers that vulnerable communities face, such as higher rates of employment in particular sectors. At all time periods studied, the average black individual in the US social distanced significantly more than the average white individual, and the average 2016 Clinton voter social distanced significantly more than the average 2016 Trump voter. Social distancing behavior differed across industries with three clusters of employment sectors.
Conclusion
Both signaling of a policy change and implementation of a policy are important factors that seem to influence social distancing. Behaviors shifted with national announcements prior to mandates, though social distancing further declined nationwide as the first states reopened. The variation in behavioral drivers including vulnerability, race, political affiliation, and employment industry demonstrates the need for targeted policy messaging and interventions tailored to address specific barriers for improved social distancing and mitigation.
Article activity feed
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.04.20119131: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This analysis has several limitations. The most apparent is that many vulnerability dimensions and population characteristics are confounded. Second, because policy effects are likely cumulative, it is difficult to tease out individual policy effects. The selected national announcements may also not have any causal …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.04.20119131: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:This analysis has several limitations. The most apparent is that many vulnerability dimensions and population characteristics are confounded. Second, because policy effects are likely cumulative, it is difficult to tease out individual policy effects. The selected national announcements may also not have any causal relationship with the observed shifts in social distancing behavior and may not reflect the true first shift in increasing or decreasing social distancing behavior. However, observational data show a clear large difference in the magnitude of social distancing before and after these time periods, in line with broad changes in the national discourse, suggesting a certain relationship. Lastly, we have not attempted to fully capture the perceptual drivers and other potential signals such as news, misinformation campaigns, and social norms. The reported results are therefore only observational in nature and cannot quantify the true causal effects of policies on social distancing behavior. However, our findings show that different communities respond in social distancing differently. More research and analysis is needed to understand how different policy approaches to restrictions and relaxation impact progress along the epidemic curve, and to identify which drivers, such as policy type or trust in government, are to be found in the causal pathway. Research is also needed to explore the causal relationship between specific policies and behaviors as well as how the descr...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
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- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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