Comparing Opening Patterns of Chain vs Community Establishments During COVID-19

Social learning shows community establishments follow decisions that nearby chain establishments make

As places where people congregate, business firms have a decent amount of power and influence on how people interact during situations like the COVID-19 pandemic. Even under government regulations and health guidelines, these firms have considerable control over keeping their establishment open or closed.

In their recent paper, Mathijs de Vaan, Saqib Mumtaz, Abhishek Nagaraj, and Sameer B. Srivastava take this premise and examine the role social learning has on the decisions these establishments make. More specifically, they focus on how chain establishments’ decisions to remain open or close impact community establishments (that are independently owned and operated) in the same industries.

Figure 1: Illustration of our research design

Accurate, detailed SafeGraph point of interest (POI) data about chain and community establishments (by industry) enabled this study, as researchers could plot these locations and analyze mobility patterns. As you can see above, detailed POI data lets them map chain and community establishments, as well as distinguish between which ones were open and closed at different times.

Table 1: Summary Statistics

A number of factors had to be considered during the course of their study, which are tracked in the table above. This includes whether the location was open or not and the key independent variable, the proportion of chain establishments that are open in the same zip code and industry as the focal community establishment. They also accounted for a lag in social learning, expecting these community establishments to be behind the chain counterparts in adopting policies.

Make sure you check out the full research paper:

Social Learning in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Community Establishments’ Closure Decisions Follow Those of Nearby Chain Establishments

Mathijs de Vaan, Saqib Mumtaz, Abhishek Nagaraj, and Sameer B. Srivastava.

This research was made possible with Placekey’s universal location identifier and SafeGraph’s mobility datasets that allow you to analyze movement patterns. To learn what others using these solutions are doing, join the SafeGraph community!