Human mobility reshaped? Deciphering the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on activity patterns, spatial habits, and schedule habits

Abstract

Despite the historically documented regularity in human mobility patterns, the relaxation of spatial and temporal constraints, brought by the widespread adoption of telecommuting and e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a growing desire for flexible work arrangements in a post-pandemic work, indicates a potential reshaping of these patterns. In this paper, we investigate the multifaceted impacts of relaxed spatio-temporal constraints on human mobility, using well-established metrics from the travel behavior literature. Further, we introduce a novel metric for schedule regularity, accounting for specific day-of-week characteristics that previous approaches overlooked. Building on the large body of literature on the impacts of COVID-19 on human mobility, we make use of passively tracked Point of Interest (POI) data for approximately 21,700 smartphone users in the US, and analyze data between January 2020 and September 2022 to answer two key questions: (1) has the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated relaxation of spatio-temporal activity patterns reshaped the different aspects of human mobility, and (2) have we achieved a state of stable post-pandemic “new normal”? We hypothesize that the relaxation of the spatiotemporal constraints around key activities will result in people exhibiting less regular schedules. Findings reveal a complex landscape: while some mobility indicators have reverted to pre-pandemic norms, such as trip frequency and travel distance, others, notably at-home dwell-time, persist at altered levels, suggesting a recalibration rather than a return to past behaviors. Most notably, our analysis reveals a paradox: despite the documented large-scale shift towards flexible work arrangements, schedule habits have strengthened rather than relaxed, defying our initial hypotheses and highlighting a desire for regularity. The study’s results contribute to a deeper understanding of the post-pandemic “new normal”, offering key insights on how multiple facets of travel behavior were reshaped, if at all, by the COVID-19 pandemic, and will help inform transportation planning in a post-pandemic world.