When local governments’ stay-at-home orders meet the white house’s “opening up america again”

TL;DR

This paper examines how conflicting government policies on stay-at-home orders and reopening efforts affected community mobility in U.S. counties.

Contribution

The study introduces a panel dataset of U.S. counties to analyze how political ideology influences adherence to conflicting government policies.

Findings

Stay-at-home orders reduced time spent in retail and recreation businesses before the OuAA campaign.

Conservative counties saw a 23% increase in retail/recreation time post-OuAA, compared to 9% in liberal counties.

Conservative counties with stay-at-home orders still increased retail/recreation time less than those without such orders.

Abstract

In the current polarized political climate, citizens frequently face conflicting directives from their local and federal government officials. For instance, on April 16th, 2020, The White House launched the “Opening up America Again” (OuAA) campaign while many U.S. counties had stay-at-home orders. We created a panel data set of U.S. counties to study the impact of U.S. counties’ stay-at-home orders on community mobility before and after The White House’s campaign to reopen the country. Our results suggest that before the OuAA campaign, stay-at-home orders substantially decreased the time spent in retail and recreation businesses. However, after the launch of the OuAA campaign, the time spent at retail and recreational businesses in a typical conservative county increased significantly more than in liberal counties (23% increase in a typical conservative county vs. 9% increase in a typical liberal county). We also found that in conservative counties with stay-at-home orders, time spent at retail and recreational businesses increased less than in those without stay-at-home orders. These findings illuminate that when federal and local government policies are at odds, residents decide which policies to adhere to based on the alignment between their political ideology and the government body. Our findings highlight the substantial importance of each government body in forming citizens’ behaviors, offering practical implications for policy makers during natural disasters.

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