Dynamic Relationship between Information Dissemination by Local Governors and Mobility during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted countries to implement a variety of containment measures, including non-pharmaceutical interventions such as stay-at-home orders. Japan has avoided legally enforcing strict measures such as complete or partial lockdowns, instead relying on voluntary restraint from going out during the state of emergency. We evaluate the impact of information dissemination on people’s mobility. First, we apply the latest findings in natural language processing research to precisely measure the information dissemination effect for each prefecture in Japan. Second, we analyse the dynamic relationship between information dissemination and mobility in each prefecture in Japan using econometric methods. Third, we divide the sample into an early and a later period when the Delta variant emerged in order to analyse the time-varying dynamics of the information effect. Our investigation yields two major findings: First, the stay-at-home information dissemination significantly suppressed people’s mobility. Second, we found a remarkable change in the magnitude of the information effect over time. The information effect weakens after the dominance of the Delta variant compared with the early stage of the pandemic.