Evaluating relocation behavior of establishments: Evidence for the short-term effects of COVID-19

Due to the significant effects of establishments’ relocations on travel patterns and land-use conditions, investigating establishments’ relocation behavior is an important issue. In recent years, many establishments closed or relocated because of a downturn economy, health concerns, interrupted supply chains, and work-from-home caused by the pandemic. Hence, this study aims to propose a modeling approach to assess and compare the relocation behavior of establishments before, during, and after the pandemic. Establishments’ relocation behavior is modeled in two steps: relocation decision and relocation action. The former provides insights into behavioral factors associated with establishment relocation and the latter models likelihood of spatial relocation choice. Using the data collected from the state of Tennessee, USA, the Random Forest classification approach is incorporated to model both steps, where the model validation results showed the promising accuracy of this modeling approach. Moreover, statistical analyses are applied to evaluate the differences between the spatial relocation choices throughout the time. Results showed that in post-Covid conditions, the importance of establishment characteristics on relocation decisions was reduced by half and relocations occurred more due to office profile and accessibility. Results of modeling relocation action indicated the high importance of accessibility, even though the attractiveness of accessibility was reduced by 20.9% in post-Covid analysis. The findings of this study enrich the knowledge on establishment relocation behavior and provide valuable information regarding the effect of the pandemic, which can be used in policy development and travel behavior modeling by urban and transportation planners.