Year-to-year time allocation and spatial structure of Americans’ daily schedules from 2019 to 2022 and a detailed analysis of the stay-at-home all-day patterns

While numerous studies have examined the effects of COVID-19 on our lives, few of them take into account the simultaneous changes in people’s daily routines from both time allocation and spatial movement perspectives. Based on the American Time Use Survey, this study proposes a novel methodology that combines sequence analysis and labeled motifs to probe the evolution of individuals’ time allocation and mobility movements from the pre-COVID period to the post-vaccination period using activity-travel sequences and network-like daily combinations of destinations and trips called motifs. Additionally, the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and the time allocation and spatial movement of people’s daily schedules are investigated using a multinomial logit model and binary logit models. The results show that: (1) each ATUS year (from 2019 to 2022) contains mixed days, work days, and leisure days; (2) most trips decreased and increased proportionally from 2019 to 2022 and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels; (3) the stay-at-home motif shows the highest percentage and Americans tend to follow motifs with fewer destinations; and (4) personal and household characteristics influence people’s time allocation and spatial movements differently at different stages of the pandemic outbreak. Our analysis can assist in predicting travel time to reduce traffic congestion and also the timing of energy consumption to avoid energy demand spikes.