Does recurring pandemic waves have a long-term impact on travel willingness: a national scale investigation

Keywords: movement control order, COVID-19, travel willingness, diminishing marginal benefits effect
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, all governments worldwide adopted substantial travel restrictions to reduce the spread of the disease. Recently, most countries gradually began to ease travel restrictions or open borders; however, different variants in each pandemic wave still caused numerous people to be infected and die. This study investigated the association between pandemic waves and travel willingness over a long-term period. Demographic data, check-ins and confirmed case datasets of the 16 states in Malaysia from January 2021 to April 2022 were collected. The Malaysian government relaxed the restricted movement control order (MCO) twice within this period: conditional MCO from March to April 2021 and fully relaxing from July 2021 to April 2022. We applied a standardized log moving average ratio to check-ins and confirmed cases. The results showed that the taking MCO effect significantly declined people’s travel willingness; however, traveling willingness was resumed after the first relaxing MCO. Remarkably, some people tended to go outside in the second exiting MCO period, even under an increase in confirmed cases. The effects of pandemic waves gradually declined on travel willingness after September 2021 and disappeared in April 2022. This study found that the recurring pandemic waves could not sustain and stimulate the awareness of infections to maintain low travel willingness. Meanwhile, the gradually declined impact reflected the diminishing marginal benefits effect of pandemic waves on travel willingness. As a result, if a severe new pandemic wave comes, the government must restrict MCO to avoid large-scale disease transmission.