Travel Behavior Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia: Present, Past and Future

Abstract

COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019) brought major changes to the behavior and mobility of people all over the world. This change is mainly a consequence of the lockdown and social distancing taken by governments in most countries around the world. This article presents an analysis of a survey conducted in major cities from 6 big islands in Indonesia (Java, Bali, Sumatera, Kalimantan, Maluku, Papua) where citizens were asked about their mobility preferences before, during, and after the lockdown due to the virus and about factors that influence the decision in choosing a mode. The surveyors distributed the closed questionnaire using Google forms to reduce the contact time with the respondents. The data is processed through a comparative test with the Friedman Test revealed that there is an average difference in the choice of transportation mode before, during, and after the pandemic and there is also a difference about the main travel purpose of the community before, during, and after the pandemic. The main purpose of respondents' travel before the pandemic was work/school, during the pandemic it was shopping the daily needs (except those working in the essential sector) and after the pandemic returning to work/school as the main purpose of travel.

The results of the influence test on nine socio-demographic conditions revealed that before the pandemic there were 6 factors that influenced the mode choice, which is: gender, type of job, working in the essential sector or not, the number of people in the family, vehicle ownership and marital status influenced the modal choice, during pandemic COVID-19 there was 5 influential factors, which is: age, occupation, working in the essential sector/not, number of family members and vehicle ownership after the pandemic are the same as before the pandemic except working in the essential sector/not.