2020 (Spring) Survey

As part of the quantitative component of the project, in Spring 2020, we administered three versions of an online survey to respondents in the United States, Canada, as well as other countries: A longitudinal survey (Dataset L) was used to resample respondents from our previous 2018 California mobility survey (~3,400 respondents from California) and 2019 "8 cities" travel survey (~3,300 respondents from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Boston, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Kansas City and Washington DC). This gave us a unique opportunity to build a longitudinal study to investigate the impacts of the pandemic. For all these respondents, the research team had already access to a large dataset containing information on several dimensions of interest, including regular travel patterns, vehicle ownership, household organization, telecommuting patterns, e-shopping behaviors, emerging delivery services, environmental attitudes, land use preferences, use of shared mobility - including ridehailing (e.g. Uber/Lyft), shared ridehailing (i.e. UberPOOL/Lyft Share), car sharing, bike sharing and e-scooter sharing, use of public transit, active modes of transportation, propensity towards AVs, among other variables, from the baseline data collections in 2018 / 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic, when everybody was behaving normally). With 1,349 respondents in this version of the COVID-19 survey in 2020, the longitudinal study provides our research team a great opportunity to analyze the changes in individuals’ attitudes and behaviors now as well as when people go back to the “new” normality. An Opinion Panel (Dataset O) provides our research team with a breadth of new respondents recruited in 15 regions in the US and two regions in Canada. The 17 study regions include all regions that were already sampled in the longitudinal component of the study (see Dataset L above), with the addition of seven additional US regions and two regions in Canada that were not included in the previous round of data collection. For additional details on the regions included in this part of the study, please see the "Study Regions" page. A total of 8,834 respondents from the 17 regions completed this version of the survey in Spring 2020. A Convenience Sample (Dataset C) expanded the data collection with a convenience sample that invited respondents to participate in our study through several different channels, including professional listservs and social media (e.g., Facebook and Instagram ads). The collection of a convenience sample added a relatively simple way to expand the data collection both in the same focus regions described above and in other regions of the US and Canada, as well as in other countries, using the same survey tool that was designed for this study. More than 1,308 respondents completed this version of the survey.