Arora V, Chakravarty S, Kapoor H, Mukherjee S, Roy S, Tagat A. No going back: COVID-19 disease threat perception and male migrants' willingness to return to work in India.
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION 2023;
209:533-546. [PMID:
37025424 PMCID:
PMC10040349 DOI:
10.1016/j.jebo.2023.03.017]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2021] [Revised: 03/11/2023] [Accepted: 03/19/2023] [Indexed: 06/19/2023]
Abstract
This paper explores the causal link between the likelihood of re-migration to cities and the perceived threat of contracting COVID-19 using novel data on male reverse migrant workers in India. We find that reverse-migrants who believe there is a significant chance of contracting COVID-19 display a significantly lower likelihood of returning to their urban workplaces, regardless of their duration of migration. On the other hand, longer-duration migrants display a lower perceived chance of contracting COVID-19 than shorter-duration migrants. We also contribute to the migration literature by linking behavioural attributes to the decision to migrate. We find that more impatient individuals display a heightened belief regarding contracting COVID-19 and a higher projected likelihood of returning to work. Finally, we find that while both loss and risk-averse individuals have a lower projected likelihood of returning to urban workplaces, only loss-averse individuals perceive that their chance of contracting COVID-19 is lower.
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