Assessing the Impacts of Stay-in-Place Policy of COVID-19 Pandemic during the Chinese Spring Festival: A Stated Preference Approach

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate Chinese people’s willingness to stay in the city where they work when the Spring Festival meets the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, a stated choice experiment about intercity travel including three homecoming trips (i.e., trips carried by conventional railway, high-speed railways, and private car) and the option “stay in place” was designed. Respondents were requested to choose the most preferred alternative in the context of the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic and relevant policies. Based on the data collected from 800 respondents, a latent class mixed logit model was developed and estimated to capture the potential correlations within alternatives and respondents and the preference heterogeneity between respondents. Two latent classes were identified, one of which paid more attention to epidemic prevention policies while the other cared more about the characteristics of homecoming trips. Results show that people’s willingness to stay in the city of work is largely dependent on epidemic prevention policies in their hometowns and decisions of social network members.