Each week respondi bring you The Stay at Home Diary – a diary of how people are behaving during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Stay At Home Diary is based on passive data which monitors panellists online behaviours.
Paris. All over Europe people are being told to stay home. In France, and especially in Paris, people’s behavior has been criticized. According to the authorities, too many people aren’t abiding to safety procedures such as social distancing. Last week, the media showed pictures of people strolling along the sunny banks of the River Seine or wandering around crowded food markets.
However, our data suggests many are changing their behavior in line with safety procedures. Yes, more could be done. But major behavioral shifts are evident.
1. The safety message has been received
The biggest increase in the number of visits is to government website. Typically, as compared to the days before, we noticed a 2,000%2 increase in the number of visits on interieur.gouv.fr. News websites have also been read far more than usual. For instance, we have measured a 290% increase on huffingtonpost.fr.
2. People are locking down
Traffic increases for education and remote working websites reflect the implementation of the lockdown policies:
- Kids study at home – (+1,121% increase on the CNED website; where the kids have access to online lessons)
- Parents work at home – (+148% increase on the office365 website; +471% on hp.com, maybe a side effect of the need for a printed version of the laissez-passer – the permit needed to go outside)
- People aren’t travelling – Mobility app use has fallen. Google map’s usage has decreased fourfold since the lockdown, number of usages of Waze by threefold…. This obviously reflects the limitation of movement imposed by the new regulations
- People are consuming media – since the beginning of the lockdown, many have focussed on Netflix’s increased usage. However, our data revealed Canal +, with its temporary free access policy, has benefited from the lockdown more than Netflix. However, based on our data we can see that French people overall seem to have taken the situation very seriously! Go on! #restezchezvous!
3. But one improvement is tough
We paid a specific attention to the pages used to access the online form needed for the laissez-passer when going outside. Among a n=1,314 national representative (gender, age) sample, 45% have visited at least once (average number of visits per visitor: 1.86) one of those pages. But frequency significantly decreases among younger targets (see chart below) and varies depending on the size of the city where they live and is lower among higher socioeconomic classes. Specific communication actions could address those segments of the population could help keep people inside.
Next time we’ll bring you a Stay at Home Diary, from London, England!
- A panel of n=2,000 tracked online behviours in France
- Based on 730,238 websites visits on desktop, from a n=1,910 nationally representative (gender, age) French sample. Time-frame: 1st March to 17th March
