IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v136y2023icp209-227.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interaction between travel restriction policies and the spread of COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Meng, Xin
  • Guo, Mingxue
  • Gao, Ziyou
  • Kang, Liujiang

Abstract

To investigate the interaction between travel restriction policies and the spread of COVID-19, we collected data on human mobility trends, population density, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, daily new confirmed cases (or deaths), and the total confirmed cases (or deaths), as well as governmental travel restriction policies from 33 countries. The data collection period was from April 2020 to February 2022, resulting in 24,090 data points. We then developed a structural causal model to describe the causal relationship between these variables. Using the Dowhy method to solve the developed model, we found several significant results that passed the refutation test. Specifically, travel restriction policies played an important role in slowing the spread of COVID-19 until May 2021. International travel controls and school closures had an impact on reducing the spread of the pandemic beyond the impact of travel restrictions. Additionally, May 2021 marked a turning point in the spread of COVID-19 as it became more infectious, but the mortality rate gradually decreased. The impact of travel restriction policies on human mobility and the pandemic diminished over time. Overall, the cancellation of public events and restrictions on public gatherings were more effective than other travel restriction policies. Our findings provide insights into the effects of travel restriction policies and travel behavioral changes on the spread of COVID-19, while controlling for informational and other confounding variables. This experience can be applied in the future to respond to emergent infectious diseases.

Suggested Citation

  • Meng, Xin & Guo, Mingxue & Gao, Ziyou & Kang, Liujiang, 2023. "Interaction between travel restriction policies and the spread of COVID-19," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 209-227.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:136:y:2023:i:c:p:209-227
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2023.04.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X23000896
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tranpol.2023.04.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shengjie Lai & Nick W. Ruktanonchai & Liangcai Zhou & Olivia Prosper & Wei Luo & Jessica R. Floyd & Amy Wesolowski & Mauricio Santillana & Chi Zhang & Xiangjun Du & Hongjie Yu & Andrew J. Tatem, 2020. "Effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions to contain COVID-19 in China," Nature, Nature, vol. 585(7825), pages 410-413, September.
    2. Karaivanov, Alexander & Lu, Shih En & Shigeoka, Hitoshi & Chen, Cong & Pamplona, Stephanie, 2021. "Face masks, public policies and slowing the spread of COVID-19: Evidence from Canada," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Serina Chang & Emma Pierson & Pang Wei Koh & Jaline Gerardin & Beth Redbird & David Grusky & Jure Leskovec, 2021. "Mobility network models of COVID-19 explain inequities and inform reopening," Nature, Nature, vol. 589(7840), pages 82-87, January.
    4. Cho, Jung-Hoon & Kim, Dong-Kyu & Kim, Eui-Jin, 2022. "Multi-scale causality analysis between COVID-19 cases and mobility level using ensemble empirical mode decomposition and causal decomposition," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 600(C).
    5. Meng, Xin & Guo, Mingxue & Gao, Ziyou & Yang, Zhenzhen & Yuan, Zhilu & Kang, Liujiang, 2022. "The effects of Wuhan highway lockdown measures on the spread of COVID-19 in China," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 169-180.
    6. Zhang, Junyi, 2020. "Transport policymaking that accounts for COVID-19 and future public health threats: A PASS approach," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 405-418.
    7. Gloria Hyunjung Kwak & Lowell Ling & Pan Hui, 2021. "Deep reinforcement learning approaches for global public health strategies for COVID-19 pandemic," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(5), pages 1-15, May.
    8. Wang, Haoyun & Noland, Robert B., 2021. "Bikeshare and subway ridership changes during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 262-270.
    9. Chernozhukov, Victor & Kasahara, Hiroyuki & Schrimpf, Paul, 2021. "Causal impact of masks, policies, behavior on early covid-19 pandemic in the U.S," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 220(1), pages 23-62.
    10. Li, Tao & Wang, Jiaoe & Huang, Jie & Yang, Wenyue & Chen, Zhuo, 2021. "Exploring the dynamic impacts of COVID-19 on intercity travel in China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    11. Phebo D Wibbens & Wesley Wu-Yi Koo & Anita M McGahan, 2020. "Which COVID policies are most effective? A Bayesian analysis of COVID-19 by jurisdiction," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(12), pages 1-19, December.
    12. Xin, Mengwei & Shalaby, Amer & Feng, Shumin & Zhao, Hu, 2021. "Impacts of COVID-19 on urban rail transit ridership using the Synthetic Control Method," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 1-16.
    13. Liu, Shasha & Yamamoto, Toshiyuki, 2022. "Role of stay-at-home requests and travel restrictions in preventing the spread of COVID-19 in Japan," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 1-16.
    14. Nina Haug & Lukas Geyrhofer & Alessandro Londei & Elma Dervic & Amélie Desvars-Larrive & Vittorio Loreto & Beate Pinior & Stefan Thurner & Peter Klimek, 2020. "Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(12), pages 1303-1312, December.
    15. Feng Wang & Xing Ge & Danwen Huang, 2022. "Government Intervention, Human Mobility, and COVID-19: A Causal Pathway Analysis from 121 Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-26, March.
    16. Solomon Hsiang & Daniel Allen & Sébastien Annan-Phan & Kendon Bell & Ian Bolliger & Trinetta Chong & Hannah Druckenmiller & Luna Yue Huang & Andrew Hultgren & Emma Krasovich & Peiley Lau & Jaecheol Le, 2020. "The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic," Nature, Nature, vol. 584(7820), pages 262-267, August.
    17. Zhu, Chunli & Wu, Jianping & Liu, Mingyu & Wang, Linyang & Li, Duowei & Kouvelas, Anastasios, 2021. "Recovery preparedness of global air transport influenced by COVID-19 pandemic: Policy intervention analysis," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 54-63.
    18. Jayson S. Jia & Xin Lu & Yun Yuan & Ge Xu & Jianmin Jia & Nicholas A. Christakis, 2020. "Population flow drives spatio-temporal distribution of COVID-19 in China," Nature, Nature, vol. 582(7812), pages 389-394, June.
    19. Hu, Songhua & Xiong, Chenfeng & Liu, Zhanqin & Zhang, Lei, 2021. "Examining spatiotemporal changing patterns of bike-sharing usage during COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    20. Pearl Judea, 2010. "An Introduction to Causal Inference," The International Journal of Biostatistics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-62, February.
    21. Zhang, Junyi & Zhang, Runsen & Ding, Hongxiang & Li, Shuangjin & Liu, Rui & Ma, Shuang & Zhai, Baoxin & Kashima, Saori & Hayashi, Yoshitsugu, 2021. "Effects of transport-related COVID-19 policy measures: A case study of six developed countries," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 37-57.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Udjo Eseroghene & Giovanna Bejjani, 2024. "Examining Patterns of Tourism Recovery in the United Arab Emirates: Towards the Implementation of Effective Marketing Strategies," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 19(1), pages 1-61, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zihao Yang & Ramayya Krishnan & Beibei Li, 2024. "The Interplay Between Individual Mobility, Health Risk, and Economic Choice: A Holistic Model for COVID-19 Policy Intervention," INFORMS Joural on Data Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(1), pages 6-27, April.
    2. Wang, Peipei & Liu, Haiyan & Zheng, Xinqi & Ma, Ruifang, 2023. "A new method for spatio-temporal transmission prediction of COVID-19," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    3. Alexander Karaivanov & Dongwoo Kim & Shih En Lu & Hitoshi Shigeoka, 2022. "COVID-19 vaccination mandates and vaccine uptake," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(12), pages 1615-1624, December.
    4. William Clyde & Andreas Kakolyris & Georgios Koimisis, 2021. "A Study of the Effectiveness of Governmental Strategies for Managing Mortality from COVID-19," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 487-505, October.
    5. Liu, Yang & Sugishita, Kashin & Hanaoka, Shinya, 2024. "Vaccination and transportation intervention strategies for effective pandemic control," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 126-137.
    6. Bo Huang & Jionghua Wang & Jixuan Cai & Shiqi Yao & Paul Kay Sheung Chan & Tony Hong-wing Tam & Ying-Yi Hong & Corrine W. Ruktanonchai & Alessandra Carioli & Jessica R. Floyd & Nick W. Ruktanonchai & , 2021. "Integrated vaccination and physical distancing interventions to prevent future COVID-19 waves in Chinese cities," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 695-705, June.
    7. Liang, Zhenglin & Jiang, Chen & Sun, Muxia & Xue, Zongqi & Li, Yan-Fu, 2023. "Resilience analysis for confronting the spreading risk of contagious diseases," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    8. Miquel Oliu-Barton & Bary S. R. Pradelski & Nicolas Woloszko & Lionel Guetta-Jeanrenaud & Philippe Aghion & Patrick Artus & Arnaud Fontanet & Philippe Martin & Guntram B. Wolff, 2022. "The effect of COVID certificates on vaccine uptake, health outcomes, and the economy," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.
    9. Sen, Anindya & Baker, John David & Zhang, Qihuang & Agarwal, Rishav Raj & Lam, Jean-Paul, 2023. "Do more stringent policies reduce daily COVID-19 case counts? Evidence from Canadian provinces," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 225-242.
    10. Gaggero, Alessio & Mesa-Pedrazas, Ángela & Fernández-Pérez, Ángel, 2024. "Shutting down to save lives: A regression discontinuity analysis of non-essential business closure," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    11. Zhang, Junyi & Hayashi, Yoshitsugu, 2022. "Research frontier of COVID-19 and passenger transport: A focus on policymaking," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 78-88.
    12. Fatemeh Navazi & Yufei Yuan & Norm Archer, 2022. "The effect of the Ontario stay-at-home order on Covid-19 third wave infections including vaccination considerations: An interrupted time series analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-18, April.
    13. Zhang, Qiang & Tong, Qiong, 2021. "The economic impacts of traffic consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic in China: A CGE analysis," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 330-337.
    14. Jiang, Shixiong & Cai, Canhuang, 2022. "Unraveling the dynamic impacts of COVID-19 on metro ridership: An empirical analysis of Beijing and Shanghai, China," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 158-170.
    15. Léa BOU SLEIMAN & Germain GAUTHIER, 2020. "COVID-19: Reduced forms have gone viral, but what do they tell us?," Working Papers 2020-32, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics, revised 18 Jan 2021.
    16. Lu Zhong & Mamadou Diagne & Qi Wang & Jianxi Gao, 2022. "Vaccination and three non-pharmaceutical interventions determine the dynamics of COVID-19 in the US," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-12, December.
    17. Germain Gauthier, 2021. "On the Use of Two-Way Fixed Effects Models for Policy Evaluation During Pandemics," Papers 2106.10949, arXiv.org.
    18. Tianyi Li & Jiawen Luo & Cunrui Huang, 2021. "Urban Epidemic Hazard Index for Chinese Cities: Why Did Small Cities Become Epidemic Hotspots?," Papers 2103.05189, arXiv.org.
    19. Elif Bozkaya & Levent Eriskin & Mumtaz Karatas, 2023. "Data analytics during pandemics: a transportation and location planning perspective," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 328(1), pages 193-244, September.
    20. Amodio, Emanuele & Battisti, Michele & Kourtellos, Andros & Maggio, Giuseppe & Maida, Carmelo Massimo, 2022. "Schools opening and Covid-19 diffusion: Evidence from geolocalized microdata," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:136:y:2023:i:c:p:209-227. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.