Social distancing has manifold effects and is used as a non-pharmacological measure to respond to pandemic situations such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), especially in the absence of vaccines and other useful antiviral drugs. Governments around the globe have adopted and implemented a series of social distancing strategies. The efficacy of various policies and their comparative influence on mechanisms led by public actions and adoptions have not been examined. The differences in types and effective dates of various social distancing policies in various provinces/territories of Pakistan constitute a pure ground to examine the causal effects of each COVID-19 policy. Using the location trends and population movement data released by Google, a quasi-experimental method was used to measure the impact of the government’s various social distancing policies on the people’s existence at home and their outside social mobility. Based on the magnitude and importance of policy influences, this research ranked six social distancing policies whose influence exceeded the effect of voluntary behavior. Our research outcomes describe that the trend of staying at home was firmly pushed by state-wide home order rather than necessary business closings and policies that were associated with public gathering restrictions. Strong government policies have a strong causal effect on reducing social interactions.

中文翻译：

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解开 COVID-19 政策对社交距离行为的精确影响


社交距离具有多方面的影响，并被用作应对新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）等大流行情况的非药物措施，特别是在缺乏疫苗和其他有用的抗病毒药物的情况下。全球各国政府已采取并实施了一系列社会疏远策略。各种政策的功效及其对公共行动和采用所领导的机制的相对影响尚未得到检验。巴基斯坦各省/地区各种社会疏远政策的类型和生效日期的差异构成了研究每项 COVID-19 政策因果效应的纯粹基础。利用谷歌发布的位置趋势和人口流动数据，采用准实验的方法来衡量政府的各种社交距离政策对人们在家中的生存和在外的社会流动性的影响。根据政策影响的大小和重要性，本研究对影响力超过自愿行为效果的六种社交距离政策进行了排名。我们的研究结果表明，呆在家里的趋势是由全州范围的居家令坚定推动的，而不是必要的企业关闭和与公共集会限制相关的政策。强有力的政府政策对减少社会互动具有很强的因果效应。