Mobility Pattern Changes in Indonesia in Response to COVID-19

Abstract

All countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic have established several policies to control the spread of the disease.\xa0The government of Indonesia has enforced a work-from-home policy and large-scale social restrictions in most regions\xa0that result in the changes in community mobility in various categories of places. This study aims to (1) investigate the\xa0impact of large-scale restrictions on provincial-level mobility in Indonesia, (2) categorize provinces based on mobility\xa0patterns, and (3) investigate regional socio-economic characteristics that may lead to different mobility patterns. This\xa0study utilized Provincial-level Google Mobility Index, Flight data scraped from daily web, and regional characteristics\xa0(e.g., poverty rate, percentages of informal workers). A Dynamic Time Warping method was employed to investigate\xa0the clusters of mobility. The study shows an intense trade-off of mobility pattern between residential areas and\xa0 public\xa0areas. In general, during the first 2.5 months of the pandemic, people had reduced their activities in public areas and\xa0preferred to stay at home. Meanwhile, provinces have different mobility patterns from each other during the period of the\xa0large-scale restrictions. The differences in mobility are mainly led by the percentage of formal workers in each region.