Not going out is the “new normal” post-Covid, say experts

Compared with just before the Covid-19 pandemic, people are spending nearly an hour less a day doing activities outside the home, behaviour that researchers say is a lasting consequence of the pandemic.

A new study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Planning Association reveals an overall drop since 2019 of about 51 minutes in the daily time spent on out-of-home activities, plus an almost 12-minute reduction in time spent on daily travel such as driving or taking public transportation.

The analysis, based on a survey of 34,000 Americans, is the first to include a look at out-of-home versus in-home time post-pandemic. The authors from Clemson University and UCLA have documented a trend toward less and less out-of-home time stretching back to at least 2003, but Covid and its aftermath have dramatically increased this shift into the home.

This shift towards “going nowhere fast” promises to affect people and society on many levels, from psychology to sociology to economics. The authors of this paper, who are urban planners, argue that less leaving home calls for a rethink of many planning and transport policies.

Their recommendations include repurposing office and retail real estate given the increase in working and shopping from home. Restrictions on converting commercial buildings to housing should also be relaxed, and curb space for delivery vehicles increased given the rise in online shopping.

“In a world where cities cannot rely on captive office workers and must work to attract residents, workers, and customers, local officials might seek to invest more heavily in their remaining strengths,” says lead author Eric A. Morris, Professor of City and Regional Planning at Clemson University.

“These include opportunities for recreation, entertainment, culture, arts, and more. Central cities might shift toward becoming centers of consumption more than production.”

For example, city centers might capitalize on their strengths by creating the dense, multiunit housing often favored by younger residents and others who prefer more urban lifestyles. Such changes might also benefit lower-income households and society more generally by lowering both housing and transportation costs.

In terms of transportation, “policy might focus less on expensive and invasive investments and policies to accommodate waxing peak period travel demand…and more on increasing pedestrian and cyclist safety and serving the basic mobility needs of disadvantaged travelers.”

Although it may involve change and some dislocation, going nowhere faster may also have important benefits, such as less time spent traveling, which may reduce fuel use and emissions and save people valuable time and money. On the other hand, more cocooning in the home might have downsides such as social isolation.

The authors find that improvements in information technology, and the fact that individuals learned to use this technology in new ways during the pandemic, was one of the key drivers behind this trend.

The researchers looked at both work and leisure habits using data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), a yearly review of how Americans spend their time. Running since 2003, the ATUS is conducted by the United States Census Bureau and sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The data were aggregated by the ATUS-X site run by the Universities of Minnesota and Maryland.

The authors – who also include Professor Brian D. Taylor and Samuel Speroni from UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies – assessed the years before, during, and after the pandemic, namely 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The year 2020 was excluded because it was not completely affected by the pandemic and because data gathering was halted at the height of the outbreak. The study examined the behavior of adults who were aged 17 and over.

The authors grouped time use into 16 activities in the home such as sleep, exercise, work, and using information technology, plus 12 out-of-home activities including arts and sporting events, shopping, work, and religious observance. Separately, they analyzed travel by car, walking, and public transport (though they exclude air travel).

Results showed the time spent on 8 of the 12 out-of-home activities fell from 2019 to 2021, while 11 of the 16 in-home activities rose.  The average time for out-of-home activities fell from 334 minutes per day in 2019 to 271 in 2021 – roughly from 5.5 hours per day out-of-home to 4.5 hours. The authors note that work from home explains part of this trend, but there were large diminutions in other out-of-home time uses as well.

A similar trend was observed for travel, with participants spending an estimated 13 fewer minutes a day in cars and other forms of transport. The authors say this downward trend could not be attributed solely to the reductions in the daily commute during Covid.  

Further, time spent away from home time has only modestly recovered post-pandemic, rebounding by just 11 minutes from 2021 to 2023, from 270 minutes to 281. This was still a reduction of 53 minutes in time away from home since 2019. All out-of-home time, all forms of travel, and seven out-of-home activities remained notably lower in 2023 than in 2019, while eight in-home activities remained higher.

Also, the trend toward staying home seems to be holding post-pandemic, as 2023 out-of-home time was virtually unchanged from 2022.

Other results of note include the fact more shopping was carried out online but this did not amount to a large increase in in-home shopping time, a finding the authors propose is due to online shopping not taking nearly as long as in-person shopping. Perhaps surprisingly, television watching did not increase apart from in the early peaks of the pandemic. More sports and exercise activities are now being done at home, most likely because people bought in-home gym equipment.

The authors say this ‘retreat into the home’ had been ongoing for at least 16 years leading up to the pandemic. This is based on evidence from an earlier study they carried out which showed out-of-home activity among adults decreased by about 1.8 minutes a day per year from 2003 to 2019. Travel over the same period dropped by about 30 seconds a day per year. But the drops of both since the pandemic were much greater than would be suggested by the prior trend. Improving information and communications technology may explain part of the story, but other trends such as a rapid increase in the amount of time Americans are spending sleeping warrant further study as well, the authors conclude.