Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on activity time use and timing behavior in Switzerland

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on activity time use and timing behavior in Switzerland. The evaluation is based on mobility tracking data collected in Switzerland during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has affected how people spend their time and schedule their activities throughout the day, subsequently creating new activity patterns. Because of the rare occurrences of pandemics in the recent past, little is known about their implications on the behavioral choices of affected people. This paper analyzes these implications by applying a multiple discrete-continuous choice model on mobility tracking data from Switzerland. The applied model is consistent with the results of the descriptive analysis and shows that the different stages of the pandemic drove changes in the activity patterns. During the lockdown, an increase in home activities comes along with decreases in the other activity types. With progressive relaxation of the measures in the following phases, the trends slowly return to the initial state before the pandemic. In addition, it can be seen that the impact of main drivers such as age, gender, household size, income and weather on time use and activity scheduling varies between phases, activity types, and time of day.