University of Arkansas

Walton College

The Sam M. Walton College of Business

Covid-19: Arkansas Mobility Trends

Google's mobility data provides a snapshot of how consumers and businesses are balancing public health and economic concerns as the state of Arkansas "re-opens" its economy. The data which is published weekly provides near real-time insights into how much consumer traffic is returning to various types of establishments in the state.

Interpreting the Data

A key caveat to making inferences from this data is that the mobility changes are measured against a baseline for mobility by location between January 3 and Feb 6, 2020. As such, consumer traffic levels close to the baseline only means that consumer traffic has returned to January levels, a month that often sees less retail and outdoor activity. Definitions for each type of location are available in the chart below and more information about how Google collects and reports this data may be found here.