The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on every aspect of human life and economic sectors such as transportation operations around the world. This paper tries to investigate how COVID-19 pandemic factors influenced the driving and customer handling behaviors of urban public transportation operators in Addis Ababa city, Ethiopia. To that end, a framework of mixed research, pre/post study design, and protection motivation theory (PMT) was used to guide the development, quantification, and analysis of the causal relationships of pandemic-related constructs on driving and customer handling behaviors. The examined driving behavior variables included harsh speeding, harsh braking, and drink-drive events concerning the time period before and during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Customer handling was also operationalized in terms of the level of friendly handling and care provided to customers. As a result, primary data were collected through transport surveys on 143 randomly selected public transit operators, including city buses, midsize buses, minibuses, bajajs, and light rail transits. Furthermore, contingency indexes, likert scales, and binary logistic regression models were used to estimate and predict the most significant factors that affected driving and customer handling behavior. Findings showed that the new COVID-19 pandemic and response measure-related factors were the most significant factors impacting driving behavior during the pandemic. Driving frequencies and intentions, as well as driving decisions or choices, were significantly influenced and reduced. Due to the pandemic-related factors, harsh driving behaviors such as harsh speeding and braking became more frequent during the pandemic compared to the pre-COVID period. Additionally, the correlation between harsh driving behavior and other factors, mainly trip distance traveled, driving during risky nighttime hours, and driving requests, was significant. Furthermore, due to the impacts of COVID-19, government measures, and changes in driving behavior, customer handling and care behaviors were predominantly unfriendly. Findings revealed that the performance of PMT was relevant, and it could inform and guide studies to understand such an impact analysis. Thus, policymakers must learn from the harsh lessons of COVID-19 and make bold investments in preparedness, prevention, and response, including pandemic-sensitive strategies and customer-oriented strategies.

The aim of this study is to investigate the impacts of the pandemic on the public transport mode choices in Ethiopia. Protection motivation theory and multinomial regression model were applied to estimate the mode choice behavior during the pandemic, compared to the pre-COVID period. This study draws an up-to-date picture of the COVID-19 implications, recent developments in transport mode choices, and gaps for future studies. Results indicated that public transport modes are the dominant modes before and during the pandemic but the choice of these modes declined during the pandemic by about 33 percent. Respondents placed more priority on pandemic-related risk, cleanliness, social physical distancing, good airflow, and travel cost when deciding mode choice during the pandemic, compared to the pre-COVID period. Pandemic-related factors, gender, income, distance of residences, and travel cost are the significant predictors of mode choice. Passengers are also likely to choose a lesser amount of public transport modes whereas more choice for alternative modes in the future of 18-24 months. The reasons for the anticipated mode choice variation are the passengers’ perception of travel risks, greater exposure to infections; shortage of infection prevention services; unaffordable service fees; disruption of services, being made out of work and working from home. Overall, the assumptions of protection motivation theory model could inform that COVID-19 pandemic is really impacting the mode choice behaviors mainly for the low-income, outer-city residents, and women. Thus, findings will imply policymaking to prepare pandemic-sensitive and adaptive transport systems during & post-pandemic period.

Although measures taken to address food insecurity and income inequality showed notable outcomes, they have continued to be major global issues mainly in urban areas of developing countries. To relieve these problems, Ethiopia started an urban safety net program in Addis Ababa city in 2017. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impacts and progress of the urban safety net program, mainly its cash transfers (CTs) on income, consumption, and food security of poor households using indicators based on elements of a theory of change and Engel's coefficient. It assessed whether the program was significant (or not) to program beneficiaries compared to situations before the start of the program, non-beneficiaries, and beneficiaries' sex. A total of 560 sample households were selected through a multi-stage sampling for household surveys. Comparative approaches, paired and independent t-tests, and linear regression were used to analyze the data. Results revealed that the CTs had a satisfactory targeting accuracy of the poor and produced positive effects on monthly income, savings, food expenditures and intake, and seed money for a business start. Since financial transfers account for a larger proportion of the income of households, current income becomes significantly bigger compared to income during the pre-program periods and non-beneficiary households. Food access, expenditure, and savings capacities of beneficiaries in post-CT became better than in pre-CT along with better food access and diet intake two to three a day than non-beneficiaries. Besides, coverage and benefits were statistically significant for women compared to men. The implementation of the urban safety net program is good in its positive impacts and progress toward nutrition and food security of poor households as a result of an increase in their income, food expenditure, intake, and access. This implies policymakers could potentially expect to see improvements in nutrition and food security, especially when targeting urban poor and female-headed households. However, delays in payments and work equipment, declining size and value of payments, and weak supplementary services are the program's shortcomings. Policy implications to improve the size of transfers, emergency aids, timely payments and equipment provisions, and interventions like regular business training, supervision, and guidance are recommended.