Causal effects of mobility intervention policies on intracity flows during the COVID-19 pandemic: The moderating role of zonal locations in the transportation networks

Abstract

Many studies have investigated the impact of mobility restriction policies on the change of intercity flows during the outbreak of COVID-19, whereas only a few have highlighted intracity flows. By using the mobile phone trajectory data of approximately three months, we develop an interrupted time series quasi-experimental design to estimate the abrupt and gradual effects of mobility intervention policies during the pandemic on intracity flows of 491 neighborhoods in Shenzhen, China, with a focus on the role of urban transport networks. The results show that the highest level of public health emergency response caused an abrupt decline by 4567 trips and a gradually increasing effect by 34 trips per day. The effectiveness of the second return-to-work order (RtW2) was found to be clearly larger than that of the first return-to-work order (RtW1) as a mobility restoration strategy. The causal effects of mobility intervention policies are heterogenous across zonal locations in varying urban transport networks. The declining effect of health emergency response and rebounding effect of RtW2 are considerably large in better-connected neighborhoods with metro transit, as well as in those close to the airport. These findings provide new insights into the identification of pandemic-vulnerable hotspots in the transport network inside the city, as well as of crucial neighborhoods with increased adaptability to mobility interventions during the onset and decline of COVID-19.