Adrian Watkins

Strict US lockdowns ended weeks ago, but many people across the country are still avoiding malls, restaurants and other businesses. The shift in behavior points to a reshaping of American commerce, fueling questions about the strength and speed of the economic recovery as the coronavirus continues to spread.. 

Through the end of last week, daily visits to businesses were down 24 percent from last year, according to a New York Times analysis of foot traffic data from the smartphones of more than 15 million people. After an initial plunge in the spring, consumer habits have been slow to recover, the data shows.

As state and local officials have moved to reopen businesses, people have reacted differently depending on how they view the threat of the virus. Shopping behavior has varied widely by the type of business in question, how prevalent the outbreak is nearby and even voting patterns in the region.

Visits to businesses have, for example, rebounded more in Alabama, a largely conservative state, than in the more liberal Vermont. But in comparison with last year, people in Vermont have been shopping again more than people in California, where the virus remains a greater threat. Everywhere, trips to pharmacies and hospitals have fallen, while those to gas stations and convenience stores have held steady or even increased.

How people spend will determine which companies survive, and who ultimately keep their jobs. Continued weakness at brick-and-mortar stores has enormous implications for an economy that has had years of gains wiped away in the months since the pandemic hit. The disparities in how people shop hint at a prolonged, uncertain and uneven recovery.

“It’s Econ 101. People are weighing the costs and benefits of leaving their homes and exposing themselves to risk,” said Christopher Cronin, an economics professor at Notre Dame who studied people’s behavior early in the pandemic.

On Friday, federal data showed that retail sales in July rose 1.2 percent from June, the third straight month of growth. But the increase, which was largely helped by unemployment benefits that have since expired, masked major shifts across various industries.

The smartphone data, which was provided by the location analysis company Cuebiq, showed that people were less likely to visit businesses if they lived in a state with a significant Covid-19 outbreak, major urban population centers or a higher percentage of Democratic voters. New York and Massachusetts, which match those descriptions, have seen some of the lowest foot traffic throughout the pandemic. At the other end of the spectrum, Mississippi, Alabama and Oklahoma have consistently been among the states with near-normal shopping habits.

States that saw early outbreaks were more likely to have imposed longer, more severe restrictions, but their residents remained cautious even after those rules had been lifted.

Mary Taggart, an art teacher in Wakefield, Mass., has not eaten at a restaurant in months and only shops regularly at her local grocery store, she said, even though many places are open. She has gone to a T.J. Maxx once this summer. “We can all name people we know who have contracted it and died,” she said of the virus.

Similar patterns emerged early in the pandemic. In March, Mr. Cronin found, state restrictions accounted for less than half of the decline in trips to businesses. People were likely to change their behavior once there was a death in their community.

Personal and political viewpoints also appear to be influencing behavior, several studies have found. Republican pundits and lawmakers have been more likely throughout the pandemic to emphasize the importance of reopening businesses and to play down worries about the virus.

“If you had a Republican-leaning and a Democratic-leaning area with similar reopening dates, the Republican area was still more likely to have a faster recovery” as measured by the restarting of small businesses, said Zoë Cullen, an economist at Harvard Business School.

Ms. Cullen and her colleagues, who have been regularly surveying business owners, found that those who provided essential goods and services, and whose products could not be bought online, thought they would be better able to weather the economic storm.

Regardless of region, bars are emptier than they were

Even in states such as Mississippi, where many people were shopping and going out to eat, bars fared poorly in the data reviewed by The New York Times.

This article first appeared here.