Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Data sources

۳٫ Results

۴٫ Discussion

۵٫ Conclusion

Author statement

Financial disclosure

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgments

Appendix A. Survey of adolescents’ travel behavior

References

Abstract

Introduction
The outbreak of COVID-19 has significantly impacted travel behavior. However, few studies have analyzed the impact of COVID-19 on adolescent travel behavior. This article analyzed the impact of COVID-19 on adolescent travel behavior using questionnaire survey data.

Methods
This paper first used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to explore the psychological factors related to the adolescents’ perceptions about the severity of COVID-19. The study then established a logit model to study the effects of COVID-19 in different phases (before, during, and after the epidemic peak), demographic characteristics, and the role of psychological factors on their travel behavior.

Results
The results show that the phase of COVID-19 did not significantly impact the adolescents’ choice of short-distance travel. The frequency of outings per week, the number of exercise sessions per week, and willingness to travel by public transportation decreased significantly in the outbreak phase. Meanwhile, the perception of the severity of COVID-19 significantly impacted adolescent travel behavior.

Conclusion
This research demonstrates that COVID-19 has led adolescents to reduce their frequency of outings, and they try not to use public transportation. Adolescents appear to be traveling more cautiously in the outbreak phase and the post-epidemic phase.

۱٫ Introduction

۱٫۱٫ Impact of COVID-19 on travel behavior
Due to the high infectious power and fatality rate, the World Health Organization (WHO) set the risk level of the coronavirus (COVID-19) as “very high” in 2020 (WHO, 2020). According to the S.I.R. model (Susceptible Infectious Recovered Model), the epidemic includes 5 phases: the normal phase, the incubation phase of the epidemic, the outbreak phase, the post-epidemic phase, and the recovery and improvement phase (Ye et al., 2020). The normal phase is a phase when there is no pandemic to create interference; during these normal times, people in the cities of China usually travel by public transit. During the incubation phase, a small number of infected people appear, but the infection has not spread. During the outbreak phase, the number of infected people increases rapidly, and the risk of cross-infection increases rapidly. In the post-epidemic phase, the number of newly infected people gradually decrease, and the number of existing infected people declines. In the recovery and improvement phase, the epidemic is controlled, but it is difficult to determine whether there are still asymptomatic infections. The epidemic outbreak phase in China ranged from December 2019 to March 2020. China has gradually entered and sustained the post-epidemic phase since March 2020.

The sudden epidemic disrupted people’s lives and significantly impacted the transportation industry and urban transportation systems (Fatmi, 2020). According to the Ministry of Transport of China, only 283 million passengers used the transportation system from January 25 to February 14, 2020. This was an average of 13.49 million passengers per day, representing a year-on-year decrease of 82.3%.1