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Contents Introduction

An increase in people leaving metropolitan areas (MAs) has been observed in various countries in the first years of COVID-19, and MAs will still be most affected in potential future health crises. Therefore, it is paramount to understand the mechanism of migration leaving the MAs (LMA migration) since it provides insight into how people adjust to health crises. This empirical study aims to investigate the impact of health risks and teleworking on residents’ LMA migration behaviors. It uses microdata from the third to sixth rounds of the Survey on Changes in Attitudes and Behaviors in Daily Life under the Influence of Novel Coronavirus Infection conducted by the Japanese government, and employs fixed effects logit models for estimation. The results demonstrate that metropolitan residents are initially attracted to local areas with lower COVID-19 infection rates. However, this impact reverses several months after the lift of the last public health emergency, and metropolitan residents move to local areas with higher COVID-19 infection rates, where they will potentially have better prosperity and more dynamic interactions. Unemployed individuals are more likely to engage in LMA migration and the employees are less likely to do so, indicating that the entrapment phenomenon is not evident in Japan. Teleworking is found to significantly facilitate LMA migration in the later stages of the health crisis, although it does not have a significant effect over the long term. Moderating effects are detected for teleworking in the sense that it enhances the trade-off between employment opportunities and health risks.