18.01.2023

Why are people in some places more willing to reduce their chances of getting COVID19?

A new study by Burcu Ozgun & Tom Broekel published in RegionalStudies, explores the role of regional news coverage on people’s mobility during the pandemic.

By using mobility as a proxy, and analysing data on regional news coverage in Germany, the authors investigate empirically whether the geographical heterogeneity in COVID-19-related news reporting has translated into spatial variations in social distancing. The  results confirm that the frequency of and the element of fear in COVID-19 news have a significant, albeit time-varying, relationship with social distancing.