Unravelling habituation for COVID-19-related information: A panel data study in Japan
Shinya Fukui
TL;DR
This study explores how people in Japan gradually became less responsive to COVID-19 information over time, affecting their mobility patterns.
Contribution
The paper introduces a novel analysis of habituation to pandemic-related information using panel data from Japanese prefectures.
Findings
Human mobility decreased by 1.09 percentage points in response to a 1% increase in infected cases during the first wave.
Habituation led to smaller mobility decreases in later waves, with 0.71 and 0.29 percentage point decreases in the second and third waves.
Spatial spillovers of infection information were observed, but not for emergency declarations or vaccination efforts.
Abstract
This study examines people’s habituation to COVID-19-related information over almost three years. Using publicly available data from 47 Japanese prefectures, I analyse how human mobility responded to COVID-19-related information, such as the number of COVID-19-infected cases, the declaration of a state of emergency (DSE), and several doses of vaccine using an interactive effects model, which is a type of panel data regression. The results show that Japanese citizens were generally fearful and cautious during the first wave of the unknown infection. As such, a 1% week-on-week increase in the number of infected cases results in a decrease in human mobility by 1.09-percentage-point (pp) week-on-week. However, they gradually became habituated to similar infection information during the subsequent waves, which is reflected in 0.71 pp and 0.29 pp decreases in human mobility in the second and…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCOVID-19 epidemiological studies · COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies