Walking, driving and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Spain

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present a detailed descriptive analysis of the influence of the mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Spain on the wellbeing of people. In this paper, we focus on the wellbeing of walkers and drivers during that period. The dataset used for this study was collected through a web-based survey during April of 2020, in which 1870 valid responses were obtained. In this study a subpart of the survey is used, including data related to travel characteristics during the lockdown and information collected regarding several wellbeing metrics. The total mobility of people was reduced more than half during the lockdown, and modal share was also altered substantially. Women increased walking by 44% and men by 48%. The use of car was reduced by 24% in the case of men, and by 11% in the case of women. Younger and older people are those who walked more during lockdown. Although walking was the predominant travel mode during the lockdown, those who walked more are related to lower values of wellbeing. Implications for the development of transport policies to improve the wellbeing of people are derived from the results of this study.