The effect of compulsory face mask policies on community mobility in Germany*

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• Author: Roxanne Kovacs,Maurice Dunaiski,Janne Tukiainen
• Date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12537

Scand. J. of Economics 125(4), 1027–1055, 2023

DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12537

The effect of compulsory face mask policies

on community mobility in Germany*

Roxanne Kovacs

University of Gothenburg, SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden

roxanne.kovacs@economics.gu.se

Maurice Dunaiski

London School of Economics and Political Science, London, WC2A 2AE, UK

m.r.dunaiski@lse.ac.uk

Janne Tukiainen†

University of Turku, FI-20014 Turku, Finland

janne.tukiainen@utu.f‌i

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate about face masks being made compulsory in public spaces to contain

COVID-19. A key concern is that such policies could undermine efforts to maintain social

distancing and reduce mobility. We provide f‌irst evidence on the impact of compulsory face

mask policies on community mobility. We exploit the staggered implementation of policies by

German states during the f‌irst wave of the pandemic and measure mobility using geo-located

smartphone data. We f‌ind that compulsory face mask policies led to a short-term reduction

in community mobility, with no signif‌icant medium-term effects. We can rule out even small

increases in mobility.

Keywords: COVID-19; face masks; social distancing; community mobility

JEL classif‌ication:D9; H12; I12; I18

1. Introduction

At the time of writing this paper in November 2022, the ongoing coronavirus

disease (COVID-19) pandemic has led to the death of more than 6.5 million

people (World Health Organization, 2022) and has had severe economic

consequences, as global GDP contracted by 4.9 percent in 2020 (International

Monetary Fund, 2020). Maximizing social welfare is arguably one of the main

*We would like to thank Aur´

elia L´

epine, Cherry Law, Timothy Powell-Jackson, Henri

Salokangas, Gustav Kjellsson, Mika Kortelainen, and Panu Poutvaara for their helpful comments.

R. Kovacs is funded by a Wellcome Research Fellowships in Humanities and Social Science

219744/Z/19/Z.

†Also aff‌iliated with VATT Institute for Economic Research.

c

2023 The Authors. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of F¨

oreningen

f¨

or utgivande av the SJE.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1028 Effect of compulsory face mask policies on community mobility in Germany

policy objectives in economics and, during a pandemic, a key constraint in

the maximization problem is that disease transmission needs to be contained

(Budish, 2020). One avenue through which governments have attempted to

contain the spread of COVID-19 is through non-pharmaceutical interventions

that target citizens’ behaviour; these centre around reducing citizens’ mobility

and social contacts in order to disrupt the chain of transmission. Examples

include now familiar policies such as closing schools, banning public

gatherings, social distancing rules, and lockdowns forbidding individuals

to leave their homes (Lyu and Wehby, 2020; Mellan et al., 2020).

The requirement to wear face masks in public spaces has proven to be

a controversial measure for containing COVID-19. In the earlier stages of

the pandemic, key international health bodies such as the the US Centres

for Disease Control1strongly advocated for face masks, whilst the World

Health Organization (WHO) actively advised against their use (World Health

Organization, 2020a). One reason for this was that, at the time, face masks

had not been shown to prevent transmission of COVID-19 (Feng et al., 2020;

Greenhalgh et al., 2020), although this has now been demonstrated (Mitze

et al., 2020; Howard et al., 2021; Ollila et al., 2022). Another key argument

against making face masks compulsory, which motivates this paper, has

however not yet been addressed: behavioural backlash. It is possible that

individuals who wear masks will feel safer and might therefore disregard

some of the most important public health advice to contain the spread of

COVID-19 – which is to reduce mobility and maintain social distancing

(Greenhalgh et al., 2020). This concern was voiced widely by researchers and

policymakers. For instance, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus

response, Dr Deborah Birx, noted that “asking all Americans to wear masks

could inadvertently signal that Americans can abandon social distancing”.2

Moreover, the UK Government’s Scientif‌ic Advisory Group for Emergencies

underlined that face masks “could make people feel invincible and therefore

be less likely to adhere to other rules around socialising and staying at

home”.3Importantly, these concerns have not subsided, although compulsory

face mask policies have been introduced in numerous countries. The latest

position of the WHO is that face masks could create “a false sense of security

in the wearer” (World Health Organization, 2020b). Concerns about face

masks creating a false sense of security are also the main reason why some

countries such as Sweden have not recommended the use of face masks in

1See, for example, https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/86411.

2Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/us/politics/coronavirus-white-house-face-masks.

html.

3Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/04/do-face-coverings-reduce-risk-and-

spread-of-coronavirus.

c

2023 The Authors. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of F¨

oreningen

f¨

or utgivande av the SJE.