Revealing the Impacts of the Pandemic on Travel Behavior by Examining Pre- and Post-COVID-19 Surveys

Abstract

Recently, the topic of travel behavior and social media usage has been widely discussed. The current study specifically focuses on how specific factors, such as the sociodemographic variables, the number of friends, the social media usage, and the ICT usage, influence their travel patterns based on survey results conducted in pre- and post-COVID-19 times. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is taken into consideration to better understand the impact of restrictions on travel attitudes. Statistical analysis is carried out to investigate the survey data. The results show that the pandemic has made a huge impact on general travel behavior, especially in terms of transport mode choice shifting towards individual modes, such as car and walking. The location choice of the participants has a significant connection to the available transport mode and the price range of the place, together with the retrieved information from the ICT devices. Based on the results, it can be seen that the pandemic has deepened the number of close friendships, but younger people do not tend to choose trendy places anymore. In addition, the results show that there is no direct connection between the number of friends and the number of meetings, and the daily online meetings have not replaced all personal meetings.