In the absence of a vaccine and medical treatments, social distancing remains the only option available to governments in order to slow the spread of global pandemics such as COVID-19 and save millions of lives. Despite the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of social distancing measures, they are not being practiced uniformly across the U.S. Accordingly, the role of compact development on the level of adherence to social distancing measures has not been empirically studied. This longitudinal study employs a natural experimental research design to investigative the impacts of compact development on reduction in travel to three types of destinations representing a range of essential and non-essential trips in 771 metropolitan counties in the U.S during the shelter-in-place order amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We employed Multilevel Linear Modeling (MLM) for the three longitudinal analyses in this study to model determinants of reduction in daily trips to grocery stores, parks, and transit stations; using travel data from Google and accounting for the hierarchical (two-level) structure of the data. We found that the challenges of practicing social distancing in compact areas are not related to minimizing essential trips. Quite the opposite, residents of compact areas have significantly higher reduction in trips to essential destinations such as grocery stores/pharmacies, and transit stations. However, residents of compact counties have significantly lower reduction in their trips to parks possibly due to the smaller homes, lack of private yards, and the higher level of anxiety amid the pandemic. This study offers a number of practical implications and directions for future research.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 大流行期间的紧凑型发展和遵守居家秩序：美国的纵向调查

在没有疫苗和药物治疗的情况下，为了减缓 COVID-19 等全球流行病的传播并挽救数百万人的生命，保持社交距离仍然是政府唯一可用的选择。尽管有关于社会疏远措施有效性的科学证据，但这些措施并未在美国统一实施。因此，紧凑型发展对遵守社会疏远措施的作用尚未进行实证研究。这项纵向研究采用自然实验研究设计，调查紧凑型发展对减少前往三类目的地的影响，这些目的地代表了美国 771 个大都市县在就地避难令期间的一系列必要和非必要旅行在 COVID-19 大流行期间。我们对本研究中的三个纵向分析采用了多级线性模型 (MLM)，以模拟减少每日前往杂货店、公园和中转站的行程的决定因素；使用来自 Google 的旅行数据并考虑数据的分层（两级）结构。我们发现，在密集区域实施社交疏离的挑战与尽量减少必要出行无关。恰恰相反，紧凑型地区的居民前往杂货店/药店和中转站等基本目的地的出行次数明显减少。然而，紧凑县的居民减少去公园的次数可能要少得多，这可能是由于房屋较小、缺乏私人庭院以及大流行期间的焦虑程度较高。