The Trade-Off Behaviours between Virtual and Physical Activities during COVID-19 Pandemic Period

Abstract

By using 781 responses from an online questionnaire, this study investigates how individuals have changed their activity-travel patterns, during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The roles of the digitalisation solutions in replacing physical activities, and which behavioural changes that may be kept after the pandemic period are investigated. Case studies from Sweden, Italy and India are in particular analysed and compared in order to investigate the plausible impacts of the restriction measurements to the behavioural changes observed.
The results show that the opportunity and possibility to change the behaviour matter. The ones who made conscious decisions not to travel for certain activities (whether it was imposed on them by external actors or by self-conscience) are the ones who consistently had a significant reduction in their trips. This is where different levels of restrictions of movement matter during the restriction period. However, the estimation results do not show any strong indication of countries’ influence (and their restriction policy) on one’s likelihood to adopt the (new/online based) behaviours for all the activities after the restriction period. The acceptance and long-term adoption of using technology alternatives tie more to the personality and socio-demographic group of the given person, which highlights the importance of promoting alternatives as a part of longer-term behavioural and lifestyle changes.

Keywords: COVID-19, behavioural change, internet usage, digital infrastructure, environmental and social sustainability, virtual activity