COVID-19 Pandemic Severity, Lockdown Regimes, and People’s Mobility: Early Evidence from 88 Countries
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Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Khulna University of Engineering & Technology, Khulna 9203, Bangladesh
2
INES Program, The William States Lee College of Engineering, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA
3
Department of Geography and Earth Sciences and School of Data Science, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA
4
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The William States Lee College of Engineering, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(21), 9101; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219101
Received: 2 October 2020 / Revised: 30 October 2020 / Accepted: 30 October 2020 / Published: 1 November 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Integrated Clean Environment for Human & Nature)
This study empirically investigates the complex interplay between the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, mobility changes in retail and recreation, transit stations, workplaces, and residential areas, and lockdown measures in 88 countries around the world during the early phase of the pandemic. To conduct the study, data on mobility patterns, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of people, lockdown measures, and coronavirus pandemic were collected from multiple sources (e.g., Google, UNDP, UN, BBC, Oxford University, Worldometer). A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) framework is used to investigate the direct and indirect effects of independent variables on dependent variables considering the intervening effects of mediators. Results show that lockdown measures have significant effects to encourage people to maintain social distancing so as to reduce the risk of infection. However, pandemic severity and socioeconomic and institutional factors have limited effects to sustain social distancing practice. The results also explain that socioeconomic and institutional factors of urbanity and modernity have significant effects on pandemic severity. Countries with a higher number of elderly people, employment in the service sector, and higher globalization trend are the worst victims of the coronavirus pandemic (e.g., USA, UK, Italy, and Spain). Social distancing measures are reasonably effective at tempering the severity of the pandemic.
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Keywords:
COVID-19; lockdown; social distancing; mobility; SEM
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MDPI and ACS Style
Rahman, M.M.; Thill, J.-C.; Paul, K.C. COVID-19 Pandemic Severity, Lockdown Regimes, and People’s Mobility: Early Evidence from 88 Countries. Sustainability 2020, 12, 9101. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219101
AMA Style
Rahman MM, Thill J-C, Paul KC. COVID-19 Pandemic Severity, Lockdown Regimes, and People’s Mobility: Early Evidence from 88 Countries. Sustainability. 2020; 12(21):9101. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219101
Chicago/Turabian StyleRahman, Md. M., Jean-Claude Thill, and Kamal C. Paul 2020. "COVID-19 Pandemic Severity, Lockdown Regimes, and People’s Mobility: Early Evidence from 88 Countries" Sustainability 12, no. 21: 9101. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219101
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