The Unspoken Messages of Restrictions

What is the best way to get past COVID-19 fatigue? According to research conducted by Michael Luca and Edward Glaeser, the government may have to improve how they communicate the risks of exposure to the public who is tired.

7A soaring number of COVID-19 cases are forcing government officials to face the crucial issue: Should they shut down the economy even more?

Limiting activities such as indoor dining may appear like a simple decision. However, the decision to relax restrictions could send a strong signal to people about their health. In reality, Harvard University research suggests that the decision to reopen restaurants last spring, shortly following the first outbreak of COVID, might have led people to believe that eating out is safe, even though there are now documented connections between eating out indoors and COVID-19 infection.

“When the government eases restrictions, they are also signaling to people that it might be safer to go out now,” says Michael Luca, the Lee J. Styslinger III Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Politicians trying to stay clear of draconian lockdowns — and thinking about eventually easing restrictions–may have to revise their communication to a panic-stricken populace, especially in high-risk activities like eating out indoors. Since the anticipation of vaccines and the holidays make it harder to separate the public, they will require more specific information to make more informed choices.

“THERE’S AN ENORMOUS APPETITE, PARTICULARLY AMONG YOUNGER AMERICANS, TO RECONNECT AND LIVE THEIR LIVES.”

“There’s an enormous appetite, particularly among younger Americans, to reconnect and live their lives,” says Edward Glaeser, one of the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University. “If my state is open, I might interpret that to mean that it’s safe.”

Luca and Glaeser collaborated with University of Maryland Professor Ginger Zhe Jin and Benjamin T. Leyden, an assistant professor at Cornell University. They reported the results of learning from deregulation The Asymmetric Impact Of Lockdowns and the Reopening of Risky Behavior during COVID-19, a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper published in August.

Lessons learned from the pandemic’s initial wave

The news of a fatal virus ravaging the United States was enough to keep diners away in the early days of March, and that was before government officials ordered restaurants to shut down. Restaurants’ sales–one of the industries hardest hit in America–slowed to 30 percent during March and an additional 34 percent during April, as per Census Bureau. Census Bureau.

This led some policymakers and analysts to suggest that lockdowns were not very effective and that the fears of the COVID-19 virus were a significant reason people stayed home. This was proven when the lockdown order expired, and restaurants reopened in the late spring. The national sales rebounded to 31 percent during May, and the rate was 27 percent by June when customers returned in a flurry, and COVID-19-related cases began to increase dramatically.

Luca, Glaeser, and their coworkers noticed remarkable trends when they looked at eating patterns. The team looked at nearly six months’ worth of information from the company that tracks foot traffic SafeGraph, to determine the number of people leaving their homes, the frequency they went out, and even where they were. A data sharing agreement with Yelp, an online review platform Yelp aids in evaluating the interest of consumers to eat at restaurants, as well as ordering food to be delivered and takeaway.

The team discovered that:

• The population across the US was mainly avoiding eating out in restaurants as of March 19, the day California issued its first stay-at-home order. COVID-19 fears were keeping diners home.
• Restaurant visits increased instantly after states permitted restaurants to provide the option of dining in person. But, restaurant activity was less than levels before COVID.
• Demand for food after lockdowns rose the fastest in areas more inclined to identify as Republican. People who were a right-leaning group were more likely to eat out, and even indoors, possibly because those who voted for GOP candidates believed the risk of infection to be lower, which is what research suggests.

This pattern highlights the challenges of ensuring that lockdowns are done correctly, and reopenings are timely when governments permit restaurants to reopen; a few individuals took the message as a sign that eating out was no longer risky. But, as the pandemic continues to spread and in the US alone reporting over 150,000 fresh cases every day since the beginning of December, the implications of such ambiguous messages could be devastating.

“Policymakers should be aware that there’s an informational component to these types of regulations,” Luca states. “When governments ease restrictions, they’re not just allowing more activity–they could also be encouraging activity by signaling that it is safe to get back out.”

Let freedom ring (safely)

Since the beginning of the pandemic, individuals have had to make decisions based on only a few facts about issues, such as how to cut their hair or as complicated as whether or not to send kids to school. The safety guidelines are constantly evolving as researchers gain more knowledge about the disease and leaders in the government grapple with ever-changing conditions.

“To be fair, a lot of this comes from the fact that policymakers don’t actually know [exactly how to respond],” Glaeser states. “It’s not like the medical community coalesced on this.”

Amid government leaders weighing the new limits to their power, Glaeser says that emphasizing the health hazards associated with an activity may help people comply more than broad limits.

“If the opening up messaging was, ‘Yes, we will allow you to do this because we respect individual freedom, but you’re taking your life into your own hands,’ I think that would have led to a very different outcome,” Glaeser declares.