Activities, time-use and mental health during the first COVID-19 pandemic wave: Insight from Greece

Highlights

• Time use and activities before and after the first lockdown in Greece.

• Effect of self-isolation in mental health and well-being of case study participants.

• Three clusters identified: Relaxed, Worried and Cautious.

• Clusters vary in terms of time spent in activities and travel behavior.

• Significant variability among clusters: irritability and fear of running out of medicine and food.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic shocked the global society and caused significant disruptions on various levels of economic and social activity, apart from the purely humanitarian and health perspective. International community and national goverments introduced a series of restrictions and other measures to minimize the spread of the virus. This paper provides insight from Greece, focusing on activities and time-use, statements towards mental health and overall wellbeing of citizens during the spring lockdown period of 2020. The analysis is based on data from more than 400 individuals collected through an online survey, which included psychometric attitudes and mental health scales, activity participation and time-use, as well as socio-economic variables and reactions to COVID-19 measures and overall situation. We present results and a respondent segmentation, by employing a latent class cluster analysis, which provides useful insight into the mental health, wellbeing of individuals during the restrictions period and information regarding the activities of the various segments of the population before and during the lockdown. Main findings include the identification of three distinct clusters of the respondents, “Relaxed”, “Worried” and “Cautious” which demonstrated some heterogeneity time-use allocation and activity patterns and feelings/mental health during the lockdown. This is one of the first papers to present activity and time-use data for the 2020 lockdown period in Greece by developing a segmentation approach of the participants based on mental health scales and indicators. Such exploratory efforts are useful in identifying different population segments that may react to government restrictions in a heterogenous way and may exhibit varying mental health statuses.