Social distancing beliefs and human mobility: Evidence from Twitter

We construct a novel database containing hundreds of thousands geotagged messages related to the COVID-19 pandemic sent on Twitter. create daily index social distancing—at state level—to capture distancing beliefs by analyzing number tweets keywords such as “stay home”, safe”, “wear mask”, “wash hands” and “social distancing”. find that an increase in Twitter day t-1 is associated with decrease mobility t. also orders, cases, precipitation temperature contribute reducing human mobility. Republican states are less likely enforce distancing. Beliefs shared networks could both reveal behavior individuals influence others. Our findings suggest policy makers can use data—in conjunction data—to better understand individual voluntary actions.