Civilian Decision Making, Displacement, and Return: Evidence from Ukraine

• In Event: The Consequences of Contention

Abstract

The displacement of civilian populations is a pernicious and common consequence of war. The number of displaced has doubled from 40 million at the start of the century to more than 89 million in 2021. The ability to address large-scale displacement and facilitate population return can be improved by a better understanding when, where, and why population movement occurs. Existing work has found a strong and consistent relationship between conflict and displacement: people leave conflict-affected locations and go to safer and more prosperous locations. Using statistical analysis of novel, granular data on cell phone activity during the 2022 Ukraine conflict, we find that the relationship between conflict and population movement is more complex. Civilian populations do not always flee conflict—even when conflict is close—and they do not always return once violence has subsided. Instead, civilians account for the proximity of friendly and hostile military forces, the initiator of conflict activity, and the intention of participating combatants. More directly, our results show that Russian-initiated armed activity that causes more non-combatant deaths and that occurs in the absence of Ukrainian defensive actions leads to significant displacement. Ukrainian-initiated activity, by contrast, leads to a different pattern: civilians leave when Ukrainian offensives are pending and return once these offensives have led to reductions in Russian-initiated activity. Additional analysis of territorial control and civilian allegiance as measured by pre-war voting reinforces this core pattern. Findings are robust to the inclusion of numerous control variables, matching to address misspecification of functional form, and use of fixed effects. These results directly improve our understanding of how civilians understand variation in violence and account for its impact when choosing to stay or move. More broadly, these findings contribute to our understanding of civilian decision-making during wartime.

Authors

• Deniz Cil, University of Maryland, College Park

• Jacob Aronson, University of Maryland, College Park