Effect of COVID-19 response policies on walking behavior in US cities
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
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.
Date Issued
2021-06-16
Date Acceptance
2021-05-24
Citation
Nature Communications, 2021, 12 (1)
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Research
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
12
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34135325
PII: 10.1038/s41467-021-23937-9
Subjects
Accelerometry
COVID-19
Cell Phone
Cities
Communicable Disease Control
Health Policy
Humans
Obesity
Prevalence
Recreation
Socioeconomic Factors
Transportation
United States
Walking
Weather
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
ARTN 3652