The Immediate Effect of COVID-19 Policies on Social Distancing Behavior in the United States

Rahi Abouk; Babak Heydari

Note that the validity of this approach hinges on the assumption of parallel trends in changes in visits absent the policies, an assumption which we empirically test using an event study approach. In the event study specification, we replace each policy indicator variable (one at a time) with 15 binary variables, which estimate the effect of that particular policy seven or more days, six days, five days, four days, three days, two days, and one day before and one day, two-to-six days (four binary variables), and seven days and more after the implementation of the policy (See Appendix B for the regression equation and more details). These variables are all zero for states without those policies. We normalize the coefficient for the day before the implementation to zero. Table 2 reports the results for the effect of policies introduced above on changes in daily visits from various places. As explained in the Data section, our main focus is on presence at home for which we report the results in column (1) . Results indicate that statewide stay-home orders significantly increase the measure associated with presence at home by about six fold (relative to states without such a policy) while more limited stay-home orders have a small and statistically insignificant effect. Non-essential business closure and restaurant and bar limits are other policies that have a positive and statistically significant impact on presence at home, although their effect sizes are around half of what is observed for statewide stay-home orders.