Do COVID-19 Policies Affect Mobility Behaviour? Evidence from 75 Canadian and American Cities

Area of Science:

• Urban Policy and Public Health
• Epidemiology and Biostatistics
• Socioeconomic Impacts of Pandemics

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated rapid implementation of diverse public health policies across different governance levels.
• Understanding the differential impact of policy aggressiveness on population behavior is crucial for effective public health interventions.
• Comparative analysis of policy effectiveness between countries, like Canada and the United States, can reveal generalizable insights.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and apply a novel metric for quantifying the aggressiveness of COVID-19 policies in Canadian and American cities.
• To estimate the causal effect of these multi-level policies on urban mobility patterns.
• To compare the policy-mobility relationship across Canadian and US urban contexts.

Main Methods:

• Construction of a unique dataset encompassing five municipal and eleven provincial/state COVID-19 policy indicators for 75 cities.
• Development of a daily 'aggressiveness' score integrating the mix of provincial/state and municipal policy interventions.
• Application of dynamic time series models to assess the lagged impact of policy aggressiveness on city-level mobility data.

Main Results:

• Significant evidence demonstrates that the aggressiveness of COVID-19 policies strongly influences subsequent mobility behaviors.
• Analysis revealed few substantial differences in policy impact on mobility between Canadian and American cities.
• The study highlights the sensitivity of mobility to policy interventions regardless of national context.

Conclusions:

• The developed policy aggressiveness measure effectively captures the impact of multi-level governance on public behavior during a pandemic.
• Findings underscore the importance of policy design and implementation in shaping population mobility responses to health crises.
• The research provides valuable data for future comparative urban policy studies in complex, multi-jurisdictional environments.