Relationship among COVID-19, mobility, and food service vouchers in Japan

ABSTRACT

In 2020, the Japanese government launched the Go To Eat campaign, a policy initiative involving the distribution of vouchers to households for use at restaurants, with the aim of supporting the food service industry, which had experienced a significant decrease in sales due to the government’s ‘self-restraint request’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper uses a nonparametric method to investigate the relationship between the Go To Eat campaign and the spread of COVID-19 in Japan by examining food service expenditures, mobility, positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, and the Indices of Industrial Production. The distribution of food service expenditures changed in October and November, when the campaign started, as well as in December, when the campaign ended. In addition, the distribution of mobility changed in January 2021, when a state of emergency was declared. The Go To Eat campaign was economically effective as a temporary subsidy, and it might have facilitated mobility in a way that was difficult to control for some time. As such, the indirect effect of the campaign on the rise in the number of positive PCR tests is undeniable.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• food service vouchers
• mobility
• self-restraint request
• nonparametric density

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I18
• E65
• E70

Acknowledgment

This study was conducted as part of the “Capital Accumulation and Productivity Growth after the COVID-19 Crisis” project undertaken at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI). The authors would like to thank the Editor in-Chief (Dr. Mark P. Taylor) and the anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. We gratefully acknowledge the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS KAKENHI: grant numbers JP21K01481 and JP21K01507) and the Japan Center for Economic Research for financial support. Any errors are our responsibility alone.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Availability of data and material

The data used in this study can be provided upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used in this study can be provided upon reasonable request.

Notes

¹ For example, there are cases in which a rapid rise in infections is followed by a sudden and abrupt decline. In contrast, there are also cases in which the number of infections increases slowly for a while and then gradually declines but never completely drops off before the next wave of infections begins due to the arrival of a new variant or other factors.

² Whereas Funashima and Hiraga (2020) evaluated the Go To Travel campaign favourably, saying that it stimulated the economy without increasing the spread of infection, Miyawaki et al. (2021) and Anzai and Nishiura (2021) evaluated the campaign negatively, saying that it promoted the spread of infection.

³ Restaurants participating in the campaign were required to register in advance and to take thorough infection prevention measures in accordance with the guidelines.

⁴ For example, on 2 October 2020, the Osaka Prefectural Government released the results of its analysis of the second wave of COVID-19, which suggested that the ‘saliva-filled environment’ of drinking and eating establishments posed a high risk for infection.

⁵ Specifically, Iwate (April, May, August), Akita (April, May, August), Nagano (August), Tottori (April, May, July), Shimane (May, September), Okayama (April), Yamaguchi (May), Kagawa (April, May), Saga (May, August, September), Miyazaki (April, May), Kagoshima (April, May). In addition, the IIP also has missing values in March 2021 in Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Yamanashi, Shizuoka, Aichi, Osaka, Hyogo, Wakayama, Tokushima, Kagawa, Kochi, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, and Okinawa prefectures.

⁶ In the figures, GR of IIP and GR of food service expenditures indicate the growth rate of IIP and the growth rate of food service expenditures, respectively.

⁷ See the Appendix for the contour results including IIP. Specifically, the results from April 2020 to March 2021 are shown in Figures A1 through A12. In addition, the Appendix switches the x- and y-axes between Figures 5 and 6.

⁸ The original data were obtained from Retty, which is a restaurant-review service in Japan similar to Yelp that 40 million monthly users and provides the number of restaurant website views on its Food Data Platform.

⁹ The websites for family and fast food restaurants have a higher number of views compared with all restaurants. Moreover, there were relatively fewer fluctuations among family and fast food restaurants, which might be due to the fact that they already offered products for take-out, and were thus less affected by the campaign.

¹⁰ For all categories, the number of website views was about $-30$% year-on-year in August, but this increased in September and recovered to about $-5$% on 11 October 2020, just after the start of the Go To Eat campaign.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP21K01481 and JP21K01507 and by the Japan Center for Economic Research.