The Effectiveness of Land Transportation Policy and the Dynamics of Travel Planned Behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

Abstract

Since 2020, Indonesia has become the country with the highest positive confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia. This situation has urged the Government to issue a series of policies in the transportation sector, namely the Large-Scale Social Restrictions and the new habitual adaptation period or the New Normal Period. This research aims to understand the effectiveness of both land transportation policy implementations during the COVID-19 pandemic and the dynamics of driving factors behind people’s decision to travel during those periods. By taking a sample of 941 respondents in two phases of the survey, the data were processed by using Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and Multiple Linear Regressions to be discussed in the Theory of Planned Behavior perspective. Serial data collection on two phases of travel restriction policies makes it possible to identify the dynamics of people's travel behavior. The results indicate that the policies were generally successful in reducing travel frequency. However, there were significant dynamics of intentional driving factors to travel. The upper-middle-income group has a more stable attitude between the two phases of the land transport restriction policy. On the contrary, the lower-middle-income group shows a more dynamic pattern of travel behavior with a higher intention to travel for work, particularly in the second phase. These results imply that the government’s travel restriction policies during the pandemic should consider different strategies to cope with the different factors influencing the travel decision of each group.