Elderly mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic : a qualitative exploration in Kunming, China
Abstract
The outbreak of COVID-19 in China started at the end of December 2019. This led to a series of containment measurements to control the spread of COVID-19. Despite of the widely reported effects of these measures, inadequate attention has gone to their social impacts. The elderly, as one of the most susceptible populations, has experienced a considerable reduction in mobility. This paper explores the role mobility played and how the social environment influenced elderly mobility in the first 2 months of the COVID-19 outbreak. We surveyed 186 families with a total of 248 elderly people in Kunming. The results show that mobility improves the quality of daily living, such as access to grocery shopping, maintenance of outdoor activities for health cultivation and preserving social networks even during the pandemic. Four themes relating to social environment emerged from the data as elements influencing elderly mobility during the pandemic: social pressure, practice of the virtue of Xiao, the social norm of respecting the aged and the impacts of technological advances. Among them, the virtue of Xiao enabled the elderly to stay in place in the early phase of COVID-19 by fulfilling their needs for daily necessities and social interactions, whilst being less technology-savvy further excluded them socially by restraining them from restoring mobility after the lifting of travel restrictions.
Citation
Liu , Q , Liu , Y , Zhang , C , An , Z & Zhao , P 2021 , ' Elderly mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic : a qualitative exploration in Kunming, China ' , Journal of Transport Geography , vol. 96 , 103176 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103176
Publication
Journal of Transport Geography
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0966-6923Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103176
Description
Funding: National Natural Science Foundation of China (41925003), Beijing Social Science Foundation (18JZD029), UKRI’s Global Challenge Research Fund (No. ES/P011055/1) and Ministry of Education Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research (No. 18JZD029).Collections
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