Abstract
The discussion of the social, political and economic consequences of the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic mainly revolves around negative effects. This study exploits a unique opportunity and analyses data from a survey (N = 13,316) that happened to be in the field in the months of the development and eventual manifestation of the COVID-19 pandemic. It documents slightly higher levels of average general life satisfaction as well as of satisfaction with various specific aspects of life (health, work, work-life balance and leisure) during the lockdown among scientists in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. It is argued that the lockdown can be regarded as a large-scale social experiment of a very sudden and abrupt change of work and social life, which is unique in history. Daily survey data elicited before and after the lockdown allows the construction of a quasi-experimental design for analysing how this abrupt change of social reality has affected satisfaction. For scientists, the lockdown mainly entailed the transition to work from home, leading to a reduced speed of life and allowing for more flexibility in incorporating family and leisure into the work day. It is discussed how some of these mechanisms might apply to the general population.
Highlights
On March 11 2020, The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the spread of the disease COVID-19 to be a pandemic
While there is a lot to do and to worry about for policy-makers, entrepreneurs and citizens to mitigate these effects, we present empirical findings suggesting the existence of some emerging positive side-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown
We suggest that the results from this specific population of scientists can provide useful insights for the general public concerning the question of how working from home affects life satisfaction, at least for specific groups of the general public who work in certain professional fields
Summary
On March 11 2020, The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the spread of the disease COVID-19 to be a pandemic. We address this by including these additional variables into the multivariate regression models, when analysing the effect of the pandemic lockdown on life satisfaction.
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