Public Health Shock, Intervention Policies, and Health Behaviors: Evidence from COVID-19

Abstract

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries, including the U.S., adopted intervention policies aimed at averting the spread. However, these policies may have led to significant changes in public health behaviors. We use Google search queries to examine how state government actions are associated with people’s internet searches (internet browsing habits) related to health behaviors. We employ the differences-in-differences method to determine the link between disease outbreak, associated intervention policies, and changes in health behavior related searches. Our findings show that school closures, restaurant restrictions, and stay-at-home orders lead to a significant rise in searches for workout, physical activity, exercise, takeout, liquor, and wine. Moreover, people’s concerns regarding weight loss, diet, nutrition, restaurant, and fast food substantially decline following stay-at-home orders. Our event-study results indicate that changes in health behaviors began weeks before stay-at-home orders were implemented contemporaneously with emergency declarations and other partial closures. These findings suggest that people’s health behaviors are notably affected by state government’s intervention policies.

Will Our Trousers Fit After the Quarantine? Effects of COVID-19 Lockdowns and Digital Social Support on Personal Health Choices

“…Although some literature has provided suggestive evidence concerning the association between COVID-19 and lifestyle health behaviors, there is relatively sparse research establishing the casual relationship. 1 The closest economic literature to ours is Alishahi and Hasanzadeh (2022), in which the authors find that school closures, restaurant restrictions, and stay-at-home orders lead to a significant increase in searches for workout, physical activity, and exercise, but a decline in concerns for weight loss, diet, nutrition, etc. In contrast to this paper purely focusing on search behaviors regarding weight management, we take one step forward and directly explore the impacts on physical exercise, dietary intake adherence, and the probability of being obese.…”