Impacts of COVID-19 lockdown on time allocation for sedentary and physical activities – The context of Indian university students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2022.101383Get rights and content

Highlights

  • With an increase in education levels, students allocate more time to Sedentary and Eat-Sleep activities and relatively less time to physical activities.

  • Indian university students from low-income households show a higher tendency of allocating time to Physical activities and spend less time in Sedentary and Eat-Sleep activities.

  • Bicycle ownership has a significant positive association with PA activity durations.

  • Students with a high score on the ‘Anxiety’ factor experienced a negative change in the time spent on Eat-Sleep activities.

Abstract

Introduction

Covid-19 pandemic has impacted individuals’ time allocation decisions. As it is known that university students display behaviors different from the general population, very few studies have examined their activity participation and time allocation behavior during the pandemic. The present study investigates the changes in time allocations to sedentary, physically active, and eat-sleep activities before and during the pandemic.

Methods

The study hypothesizes that active mode (walk, bicycle) and transit users would compensate for the physical efforts by increasing physical activities at home during the lockdown. Students' perception of personal well-being, anxiety, and individual leisure during the pandemic and their impacts on time allocation decisions after controlling for demographic variables and temporal effects are also explored. A pan India behavioral data of 203 samples collected using an online survey conducted between May to July 2020, during India's lockdown phase, is used for analysis. A series of segmented analyses (using ANOVA's and Kruskal-Wallis Test) and empirical modeling (linear mixed-effect regression) were conducted based on the time use distribution.

Results

Findings showed that university students from low-income households and students who own a bicycle show a higher tendency to spend time in physical activities during lockdown periods. Students accessing college using active modes (before lockdown) allocate less time to sedentary and eat-sleep activities than physical activities during the lockdown period. Students' perception of Leisure items among those who use active modes is significantly different from those of private and public mode users.

Conclusions

From a policy viewpoint, such investigation would help implicitly understand and publicize the health benefits of active modes and transit and encourage their use. For instance, policymakers and transport planners can temporarily allocate less-used motorized streets (due to the pandemic) to students who prefer walking and cycling as universities still function online in India.

Keywords

COVID-19
University students
India
Activity participation
Time allocation

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