Experimental results of the pilot Office for National Statistics (ONS) online time-use study (collected 28 March to 26 April 2020 across Great Britain) compared with the 2014 to 2015 UK time-use study.

The coronavirus COVID-19 crisis is slowly reshaping the way people live their daily lives, down to their makeup routines. Like many countries, France enforced a lockdown to slow down the spread of the virus. This particular period lasted 55 days, during which some people were motivated to form new habits.
Since the end of the lockdown, 53 percent of French people have continued to eat healthier, while 50 percent have carried on consuming more local products.

The professional situations of people in France, during the lockdown that was enforced because of the coronavirus epidemic (COVID-19) in March 2020, varied depending on their age. It appears that while more than half of people age under ** had to stop working, ** percent of people aged between 25 and 34 years old were able to work remotely.

Introducing national lockdowns is an effective strategy to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. In Austria, the first Covid-19-related lockdown was introduced on 15 March 2020 with most restrictions being lifted one month later. Seven months later, in November 2020, the second hard lockdown was implemented. The presented dataset contains data from the two waves of an online survey which aimed at comparing the perceptions and experiences of the general population related to the first two Covid-19 lockdowns in Austria. The first wave of data collection was conducted between 27 May and 16 June 2020, with all questions referring to the one-month lockdown period in Austria between 15 March and 15 April 2020. The second wave of data collection was conducted between 2 December and 9 December 2020 with questions referring to the second national lockdown in Austria between 17 November and 6 December 2020. In total 560 respondents were included in the first wave of the survey. Of these 560 participants, 228 provided their e-mail addresses and agreed to be contacted in the future. From the 228 persons who were re-contacted during the second wave of the survey, 141 responded among which 134 provided valid answers and were included in the dataset. Download and use of the data is conditional upon citation of the documents in any resulting work/publication as follows: Simon, J, Łaszewska, A, Helter, T (2021) Perceptions of Covid-19 lockdowns and related public health measures in Austria: Dataset, Version 10-03-2021, Department of Health Economics, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.4598821 and Simon, J., Helter, T.M., White, R.G. et al. Impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown and relevant vulnerabilities on capability well-being, mental health and social support: an Austrian survey study. BMC Public Health 21, 314 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10351-5 License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Variables included in the dataset: 1. Demographic characteristics 2. Covid-19-related questions - Tested positive for Covid-19 or experienced Covid-19 symptoms - Indirect Covid-19 experience defined as having a friend and/or family member infected or knowing someone who died of Covid-19 - Quarantine or self-isolation in the past months - Concern about infection with SARS-CoV-2 - Concern about family member infected with SARS-CoV-2 3. Lockdown-related questions - Personal experiences of the Covid-19 lockdowns: threat to livelihood/income, more difficult than usual for to focus on work or normal, daily activities, being less busy than usual, feeling more isolated than usual, the lockdown restrictions are necessary to limit spread of the virus, understanding better what is really important in life, greater sense of appreciation for the healthcare workers, communicating with relatives more often, feeling that people have become more friendly towards other people, feeling more connected to the members of the local community - Perceptions of the necessity of public health measures during the first lockdown: commuting to and from work only when absolutely necessary, walks only with people living in the same household, closure of all non-essential business premises, only necessary purchases, no physical contact with family members outside the same household, mouth and nose protection in public spaces - Perceptions of the necessity of public health measures during the second lockdown: restrictions on leaving private living space, school closing and distance learning, closure of all non-essential shops and businesses, mouth and nose protection in public spaces, ban on events or restrictions in the event area, distance of one meter in public space for people from different households, physical contact only with closest relatives or individual caregivers, switch to homeoffice wherever possible, visits in nursing homes and hospitals once a week, commuting to and from work only when absolutely necessary - Complying with the public health measures during the first lockdown: walks only with people from the same household, only necessary purchases e.g. groceries, medication, no physical contact with family members outside the same household, mouth and nose protection in public spaces - Complying with the public health measures during the second lockdown: restrictions on leaving private living space, mouth and nose protection in public spaces, distance of one meter in public spaces for people from different households, physical contact only with closest relatives or individual caregivers, switch to homeoffice wherever possible - Impact of the lockdowns on different life domains: marriage, parenting, friendships, work, education, leisure activities, spirituality, community life, physical self-care {"references": ["Simon, J., Helter, T.M., White, R.G. et al. Impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown and relevant vulnerabilities on capability well-being, mental health and social suppo...

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide pandemic in 2020. In response, most countries in the world implemented lockdowns, restricting their population's movements, work, education, gatherings, and general activities in attempt to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 cases. The public health goal of lockdowns was to save the population from COVID-19 cases and deaths, and to prevent overwhelming health care systems with COVID-19 patients. In this narrative review I explain why I changed my mind about supporting lockdowns. The initial modeling predictions induced fear and crowd-effects (i.e., groupthink). Over time, important information emerged relevant to the modeling, including the lower infection fatality rate (median 0.23%), clarification of high-risk groups (specifically, those 70 years of age and older), lower herd immunity thresholds (likely 20–40% population immunity), and the difficult exit strategies. In addition, information emerged on significant collateral damage due to the response to the pandemic, adversely affecting many millions of people with poverty, food insecurity, loneliness, unemployment, school closures, and interrupted healthcare. Raw numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths were difficult to interpret, and may be tempered by information placing the number of COVID-19 deaths in proper context and perspective relative to background rates. Considering this information, a cost-benefit analysis of the response to COVID-19 finds that lockdowns are far more harmful to public health (at least 5–10 times so in terms of wellbeing years) than COVID-19 can be. Controversies and objections about the main points made are considered and addressed. Progress in the response to COVID-19 depends on considering the trade-offs discussed here that determine the wellbeing of populations. I close with some suggestions for moving forward, including focused protection of those truly at high risk, opening of schools, and building back better with a economy.

The Aston Lockdown Reading Survey Corpus arose from the Lockdown Library Project, a study of reading during the first UK COVID-19 lockdown, that was conducted by Aston University from 1st July - 31st August 2020. The survey addressed the following research questions:

RQ1: How has the pandemic affected the quantity of books people are reading? RQ2: How has the pandemic influenced the type/genre of books people are reading? RQ3: How has the pandemic influenced people to return to previously read books? RQ4: How has the pandemic made people access and talk about books in new/different ways?

We hosted the survey on and administered it through www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk, distributing it via multiple social media channels, our own institution’s website and Call for Participants (https://www.callforparticipants.com), a platform that advertises academic research to the general public.

The Aston Lockdown Reading Survey Corpus comprises all 858 (anonymised) responses to our survey, totalling c. 200,000 tokens. The corpus includes XML markup to capture the following metadata attributes:

urn: Unique response number (URN), automatically assigned by the survey software respondent_id: Unique participant ID code corresponding to the URN, used in the reporting of individual responses age_range: Participant age category occupation: Participant occupation (uncategorised free text) gender: Participant gender identity (categorised free text) q_id: Survey question number q_type: Survey question type (open or closed) q_prompt: Survey question prompt text

The corpus is made available as a freely-accessible resource, providing a unique insight into the ways in which the first UK COVID-19 lockdown affected public reading habits.

A detailed description of the corpus and its analysis within the Lockdown Library Project is provided in Boucher et al. (2024) "Reading Habits in the Covid Pandemic: An Applied Linguistic Perspective".

The database contains the survey on the changes of gender time allocation during two waves of the coronavirus lockdown (self-isolative restrictions) in Russia. Self-isolation included shift to remote work and study, the closure of childcare facilities, restrictions of mobility, etc.

Sample information

The survey was conducted on Yandex.Survey platform. The first wave was conducted on 22-23 th of May, 2020, after 2 months of the beginning of first lockdown. The second wave took place on 17-19th of November, 2020 after 1 month of the second lockdown’start.

Data was collected via online service Yandex.Survey. The platform offers a service for conducting an online survey among 50 million users of the Yandex advertising network with the ability to make a random sample, including a sample by demographic, geographic and some socio-economic characteristics.

The respondents were women of predominantly working/reproductive age (15-55) from Russia. 1411 women took part in the first wave and 1408 in the second. After cleaning data and removing outliers 2795 respondents left.

The coincidence of the distributions with the general population in terms of the main parameters (age, size of the settlement, employment, household composition) is satisfactory. The observed (insignificant) deviations are as follows: the proportion of women aged 30-43, living in cities with a population over one million has increased; decreased - at the age of 50-54 years, living in settlements with a population of less than 100 thousand people working in agriculture.

The female respondents were asked if they spend more or less time household chores and care, including: cleaning, cooking, laundry, shopping, management, child care, other care or nothing. If a woman marked, that she is living with a partner during the lockdown, she was also asked if her partner spends more or less time on each chore.

The survey also includes questions concerning the occupation type (work, work and study, study, child care leave, doesn’t work), if a woman works (or works and studies), how the lockdown effected on her job: shift to remote work, fired, paid leave, unpaid leave, no income on restrictions, continues in-person work, and if a woman lives with a partner the same question was asked considering his work on the lockdown. Further, occupational features were divided into three: income (or husband’s income) means that a woman (or her partner) has her income on the lockdown which includes remote work, in person work, paid leave; gotowork means a woman (in her partner’s case – husb_gotowork) continues in person work; and distant if a woman is working online (husb_distant for her partner). Further, we asked whether a woman has an experience of remote work: no, and it is impossible, no, but it is possible, yes. We also asked about the size and type of her employer (small, medium, large firm or state firm).

The next set of questions considers who a woman is living with on self isolation: alone, children, partner, parents, parents-in-law, others. At last, we asked respondents age, number of children and the age of the youngest child (if the number of children >0).

The database’ structure

Survey's wave variables

Social and demographic variables

age of female respondent

size of the city

number of children

the age of the youngest child

age at last birth

woman lives with her husband

woman lives with children

woman lives with children over 18 years old

woman lives with her parents

woman lives with her husband's parents

woman lives alone

woman lives with someone else

type of activity

how the lockdown effected female occupation

field of employment

type of enterprise where woman works (or does not)

there is wife's income in household

how the lockdown effected her husband's occupation

there is husband's income in household

woman's work experience at a remote location

woman has remote work in the period of lockdown

her husband has remote work in the period of lockdown

her husband has out of home work in the period of lockdown

woman has out of home work in the period of lockdown

her husband is fired or doesn't have income temporarily because of the lockdown

her husband was fired because of the lockdown

Time use variables: the changes in lockdown

WOMAN MORE

childcare

care

cleaning

cooking

laundry

shopping

management

nothing

WOMAN LESS

childcare

care

cleaning

cooking

laundry

shopping

management

nothing

HER HUSBAND MORE

childcare

care

cleaning

cooking

laundry

shopping

management

nothing

HER HUSBAND LESS

childcare

care

cleaning

cooking

laundry

shopping

management

nothing

TOGETHER MORE

childcare

care

cleaning

cooking

laundry

shopping

management

nothing

TOGETHER LESS

childcare

care

cleaning

cooking

laundry

shopping

management

nothing

INSTEAD MORE

childcare

care

cleaning

cooking

laundry

shopping

management

nothing

INSTEAD LESS

childcare

care

cleaning

cooking

laundry

shopping

management

nothing

There are English and Russian versions of variables’ description.

During exploratory data analysis we introduced features instead or together. These new features are restricted to answers of women who live with partners. Whether a woman marks that she spends less(more) time on the chore and her husband spends more(less) time on that exact type of chore, that means he does it instead of his wife. Whether both a woman and her partner spend more (less) time one the chore, it means they do it together.

The variable “type of enterprise” was built on the criteria of credibility and stability during the corona-crisis from a small to a state firm (small, medium, large, state firm). Small and medium enterprises were hit the most by the pandemic (http://doklad.ombudsmanbiz.ru/2020/7.pdf), whether large and especially state firms had more resources to maintain employment and payments.

Reference data to accompany an article on the impact of caring responsibilities during the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown

French people spent an unusual amount of time in their households during the lockdown enforced by French authorities in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. When asked about their food-related activities in this period, around half of the respondents said they took food breaks during their working hours, and more than ** percent devoted some time to the preparation of meals.

Dataset

This dataset was created by Sofia Rebrey

Released under Data files © Original Authors

Contents

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a major influence on working patterns worldwide, given the various lockdown periods and the shift to remote working. As people’s noise perception is known to be closely linked with their work performance and job satisfaction, investigating the noise perception in indoor spaces, especially in situations where people work from home, is crucial; however, studies on this aspect are limited. Thus, here, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between indoor noise perception and remote work during the pandemic. The study assessed how people who worked from home perceived indoor noise, and how it related with their work performance and job satisfaction. A social survey was conducted with respondents who worked from home during the pandemic in South Korea. A total of 1,093 valid responses were used for data analysis. Structural equation modeling was used as a multivariate data analysis method to simultaneously estimate multiple and interrelated relationships. The results showed that indoor noise disturbance significantly affected annoyance and work performance. Annoyance with indoor noise affected job satisfaction. Job satisfaction was found to have a significant impact on work performance, particularly on two dimensions of the work performance that are crucial for achieving organizations’ goals. Moreover, one dimension of the work performance had a significant impact on annoyance. The study proposed that reducing negative perception of indoor noise and improvement of job satisfaction can lead to the maximization of one’s work performance when working from home.

IntroductionLoneliness has been shown to affect both mental and physical health, and was a major concern even before the COVID-19 pandemic. During the COVID-19 distancing measures, millions of people took to social media to express their feelings and seek social support.MethodsIn this mixed-methods study, we examine the self-disclosure of loneliness by users identifying as male or female (via self-disclosed naming conventions) on Twitter before and during the COVID-19 “lockdowns.”ResultsWe show that in the first two months of COVID-19 restrictions, self-disclosure of loneliness on this platform rose dramatically, and also have changed qualitatively. We find that female accounts tend to post more loneliness self-disclosures compared to male ones, even before COVID. Female disclosures more often center around pregnancy, family, and close relationships, whereas those posted by the male ones are more related to leadership, video gaming and sex. During COVID lockdowns, female accounts turn to online messaging apps and hobbies, and male become increasingly vocal in seeking partners.DiscussionThe insights of this study have important implications for the design of interventions for lessening the burden of loneliness in the current digitized world.

Countries around the world are in a state of lockdown to help limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, as the number of new daily confirmed cases begins to decrease, governments must decide how to release their populations from quarantine as efficiently as possible without overwhelming their health services. We applied an optimal control framework to an adapted Susceptible-Exposure-Infection-Recovery (SEIR) model framework to investigate the efficacy of two potential lockdown release strategies, focusing on the UK population as a test case. To limit recurrent spread, we find that ending quarantine for the entire population simultaneously is a high-risk strategy, and that a gradual re-integration approach would be more reliable. Furthermore, to increase the number of people that can be first released, lockdown should not be ended until the number of new daily confirmed cases reaches a sufficiently low threshold. We model a gradual release strategy by allowing different fractions of those in lockdown to re-enter the working non-quarantined population. Mathematical optimization methods, combined with our adapted SEIR model, determine how to maximize those working while preventing the health service from being overwhelmed. The optimal strategy is broadly found to be to release approximately half the population 2–4 weeks from the end of an initial infection peak, then wait another 3–4 months to allow for a second peak before releasing everyone else. We also modeled an “on-off” strategy, of releasing everyone, but re-establishing lockdown if infections become too high. We conclude that the worst-case scenario of a gradual release is more manageable than the worst-case scenario of an on-off strategy, and caution against lockdown-release strategies based on a threshold-dependent on-off mechanism. The two quantities most critical in determining the optimal solution are transmission rate and the recovery rate, where the latter is defined as the fraction of infected people in any given day that then become classed as recovered. We suggest that the accurate identification of these values is of particular importance to the ongoing monitoring of the pandemic.

In a survey carried out in May 2020, 13 percent of Brits expected the coronavirus lockdown measures to stay in place until the end of July. Another 13 percent of respondents were more optimistic and thought the lockdown measures would be in place until the end of June, although 14 of respondents expected the lockdown to carry on until 2021.

The latest number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Due to changes in the collection and availability of data on COVID-19, this website will no longer be updated. The webpage will no longer be available as of 11 May 2023. On-going, reliable sources of data for COVID-19 are available via the COVID-19 dashboard and the UKHSA

GLA Covid-19 Mobility Report

Since March 2020, London has seen many different levels of restrictions - including three separate lockdowns and many other tiers/levels of restrictions, as well as easing of restrictions and even measures to actively encourage people to go to work, their high streets and local restaurants. This reports gathers data from a number of sources, including google, apple, citymapper, purple wifi and opentable to assess the extent to which these levels of restrictions have translated to a reductions in Londoners' movements.

The data behind the charts below come from different sources. None of these data represent a direct measure of how well people are adhering to the lockdown rules - nor do they provide an exhaustive data set. Rather, they are measures of different aspects of mobility, which together, offer an overall impression of how people Londoners are moving around the capital. The information is broken down by use of public transport, pedestrian activity, retail and leisure, and homeworking.

Public Transport

For the transport measures, we have included data from google, Apple, CityMapper and Transport for London. They measure different aspects of public transport usage - depending on the data source. Each of the lines in the chart below represents a percentage of a pre-pandemic baseline.

https://cdn.datapress.cloud/london/img/dataset/60e5834b-68aa-48d7-a8c5-7ee4781bde05/2025-06-09T20%3A54%3A15/6b096426c4c582dc9568ed4830b4226d.webp" alt="Embedded Image" />

activity Source Latest Baseline Min value in Lockdown 1 Min value in Lockdown 2 Min value in Lockdown 3 Citymapper Citymapper mobility index 2021-09-05 Compares trips planned and trips taken within its app to a baseline of the four weeks from 6 Jan 2020 7.9% 28% 19% Google Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Location data shared by users of Android smartphones, compared time and duration of visits to locations to the median values on the same day of the week in the five weeks from 3 Jan 2020 20.4% 40% 27% TfL Bus Transport for London 2022-10-30 Bus journey ‘taps' on the TfL network compared to same day of the week in four weeks starting 13 Jan 2020 - 34% 24% TfL Tube Transport for London 2022-10-30 Tube journey ‘taps' on the TfL network compared to same day of the week in four weeks starting 13 Jan 2020 - 30% 21% Pedestrian activity

With the data we currently have it's harder to estimate pedestrian activity and high street busyness. A few indicators can give us information on how people are making trips out of the house:

https://cdn.datapress.cloud/london/img/dataset/60e5834b-68aa-48d7-a8c5-7ee4781bde05/2025-06-09T20%3A54%3A15/bcf082c07e4d7ff5202012f0a97abc3a.webp" alt="Embedded Image" />

activity Source Latest Baseline Min value in Lockdown 1 Min value in Lockdown 2 Min value in Lockdown 3 Walking Apple Mobility Index 2021-11-09 estimates the frequency of trips made on foot compared to baselie of 13 Jan '20 22% 47% 36% Parks Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Frequency of trips to parks. Changes in the weather mean this varies a lot. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 30% 55% 41% Retail & Rec Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Estimates frequency of trips to shops/leisure locations. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 30% 55% 41% Retail and recreation

In this section, we focus on estimated footfall to shops, restaurants, cafes, shopping centres and so on.

https://cdn.datapress.cloud/london/img/dataset/60e5834b-68aa-48d7-a8c5-7ee4781bde05/2025-06-09T20%3A54%3A16/b62d60f723eaafe64a989e4afec4c62b.webp" alt="Embedded Image" />

activity Source Latest Baseline Min value in Lockdown 1 Min value in Lockdown 2 Min value in Lockdown 3 Grocery/pharmacy Google Mobility Report 2022-10-15 Estimates frequency of trips to grovery shops and pharmacies. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20 32% 55.00% 45.000% Retail/rec <a href="https://ww

To date, there is a paucity of information regarding the effect of COVID-19 or lockdown on mental disorders. We aimed to quantify the medium-term impact of lockdown on referrals to secondary care mental health clinical services. We conducted a controlled interrupted time series study using data from Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT), UK (catchment population ~0.86 million). The UK lockdown resulted in an instantaneous drop in mental health referrals but then a longer-term acceleration in the referral rate (by 1.21 referrals per day per day, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.41–2.02). This acceleration was primarily for urgent or emergency referrals (acceleration 0.96, CI 0.39–1.54), including referrals to liaison psychiatry (0.68, CI 0.35–1.02) and mental health crisis teams (0.61, CI 0.20–1.02). The acceleration was significant for females (0.56, CI 0.04–1.08), males (0.64, CI 0.05–1.22), working-age adults (0.93, CI 0.42–1.43), people of White ethnicity (0.98, CI 0.32–1.65), those living alone (1.26, CI 0.52–2.00), and those who had pre-existing depression (0.78, CI 0.19–1.38), severe mental illness (0.67, CI 0.19–1.15), hypertension/cardiovascular/cerebrovascular disease (0.56, CI 0.24–0.89), personality disorders (0.32, CI 0.12–0.51), asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (0.28, CI 0.08–0.49), dyslipidemia (0.26, CI 0.04–0.47), anxiety (0.21, CI 0.08–0.34), substance misuse (0.21, CI 0.08–0.34), or reactions to severe stress (0.17, CI 0.01–0.32). No significant post-lockdown acceleration was observed for children/adolescents, older adults, people of ethnic minorities, married/cohabiting people, and those who had previous/pre-existing dementia, diabetes, cancer, eating disorder, a history of self-harm, or intellectual disability. This evidence may help service planning and policy-making, including preparation for any future lockdown in response to outbreaks.

When COVID-19 emerged, lockdowns were implemented to restrict the rate of transmission. Early findings have shown the extent this action had on the wellbeing of the general population. However, it was expected the impact was more pronounced on individuals living with chronic illness, or those supporting them. This study aimed to longitudinally understand the effects of lockdown on carers of people living with Parkinson’s, and how their experiences evolved after lockdown ended. Nine participants (3 male, 6 female, aged 64-79) were recruited through Parkinson’s UK and a university Parkinson’s Research Database. Participants were interviewed via telephone on two occasions: the first occasion participants discussed their experiences of lockdowns (from March 2020 to June 2021) in relation to supporting their spouse as well as their own challenges. In the second interview (completed five months after the first round of interviews) participants reflected on their experiences of life post-lockdown and the effects lockdown had on their reintegration into society. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, four themes emerged from participant interviews: (i) Lockdown-induced revolution and evolution of relationship dynamic with spouse; (ii) Fighting to be seen, heard, and understood in healthcare encounters; (iii) Making sense of, and adapting to, risk in a time of COVID-19; and (iv) Isolated and needing support during and after lockdown. Themes are illustrated with data excerpts from both data collection points. Findings show that a perceived sense of control and access to Parkinson’s support were central factors that shaped both participants’ experiences of managing during lockdown and their beliefs surrounding their relationship dynamic with their spouse post-lockdown .

Several urban landscape planning solutions have been introduced around the world to find a balance between developing urban spaces, maintaining and restoring biodiversity, and enhancing quality of human life. Our global mini-review, combined with analysis of big data collected from Google Trends at global scale, reveals the importance of enjoying day-to-day contact with nature and engaging in such activities as nature observation and identification and gardening for the mental well-being of humans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Home-based activities, such as watching birds from one’s window, identifying species of plants and animals, backyard gardening, and collecting information about nature for citizen science projects, were popular during the first lockdown in spring 2020, when people could not easily venture out of their homes. In our mini-review, we found 37 articles from 28 countries with a total sample of 114,466 people. These papers suggest that home-based engagement with nature was an entertaining and pleasant distraction that helped preserve mental well-being during a challenging time. According to Google Trends, interest in such activities increased during lockdown compared to the previous five years. Millions of people worldwide are chronically or temporarily confined to their homes and neighborhoods because of illness, childcare chores, or elderly care responsibility, which makes it difficult for them to travel far to visit such places as national parks, created through land sparing, where people go to enjoy nature and relieve stress. This article posits that for such people, living in an urban landscape designed to facilitate effortless contact with small natural areas is a more effective way to receive the mental health benefits of contact with nature than visiting a sprawling nature park on rare occasions. Methods 1. Identifying the most common types of activities related to nature observation, gardening, and taxa identification during the first lockdown based on scientific articles and non-scientific press For scientific articles, in March 2023 we searched Scopus and Google Scholar. For countries where Google is restricted, such as China, similar results will be available from other scientific browsers, with the highest number of results from our database being available from Scopus. We used the Google Search browser to search for globally published non-scientific press articles. Some selection criteria were applied during article review. Specifically, we excluded articles that were not about the first lockdown; did not study activities at a local scale (from balcony, window, backyard) but rather in areas far away from home (e.g., visiting forests); studied the mental health effect of observing indoor potted plants and pet animals; or transiently mentioned the topic or keyword without going into any scientific detail. We included all papers that met our criteria, that is, studies that analyzed our chosen topic with experiments or planned observations. We included all research papers, but not letters that made claims without any data. Google Scholar automatically screened the title, abstract, keywords, and the whole text of each article for the keywords we entered. All articles that met our criteria were read and double-checked for keywords and content related to the keywords (e.g., synonyms or if they presented content about the relevant topic without using the specific keywords). We identified, from both types of articles, the major nature-based activities that people engaged in during the first lockdown in the spring of 2020. Keywords used in this study were grouped into six main topics: (1) COVID-19 pandemic; (2) nature-oriented activity focused on nature observation, identification of different taxa, or gardening; (3) mental well-being; (4) activities performed from a balcony, window, or in gardens; (5) entertainment; and (6) citizen science (see Table 1 for all keywords). 2. Increase in global trends in interest in nature observation, gardening, and taxa identification during the first lockdown We used the categorical cluster method, which was combined with big data from Google Trends (downloaded on 1 September 2020) and anomaly detection to identify trend anomalies globally in peoples’ interests. We used this combination of methods to examine whether interest in nature-based activities that were mentioned in scientific and nonscientific press articles increased during the first lockdown. Keywords linked with the main types of nature-oriented activities, as identified from press and scientific articles, and used according to the categorical clustering method were classified into the following six main categories: (1) global interest in bird-watching and bird identification combined with citizen science; (2) global interest in plant identification and gardening combined with citizen science; (3) global interest in butterfly watching, (4) local interest in early-spring (lockdown time), summer, or autumn flowering species that usually can be found in Central European (country: Poland) backyards; (5) global interest in traveling and social activities; and (6) global interest in nature areas and activities typically enjoyed during holidays and thus requiring traveling to land-spared nature reserves. The six categories were divided into 15 subcategories so that we could attach relevant words or phrases belonging to the same cluster and typically related to the activity (according to Google Trends and Google browser’s automatic suggestions; e.g., people who searched for “bird-watching” typically also searched for “binoculars,” “bird feeder,” “bird nest,” and “birdhouse”). The subcategories and keywords used for data collection about trends in society’s interest in the studied topic from Google Trends are as follows.

Bird-watching: “binoculars,” “bird feeder,” “bird nest,” “birdhouse,” “bird-watching”; Bird identification: “bird app,” “bird identification,” “bird identification app,” “bird identifier,” “bird song app”; Bird-watching combined with citizen science: “bird guide,” “bird identification,” “eBird,” “feeding birds,” “iNaturalist”; Citizen science and bird-watching apps: “BirdNET,” “BirdSong ID,” “eBird,” “iNaturalist,” “Merlin Bird ID”; Gardening: “gardening,” “planting,” “seedling,” “seeds,” “soil”; Shopping for gardening: “garden shop,” “plant buy,” “plant ebay,” “plant sell,” “plant shop”; Plant identification apps: “FlowerChecker,” “LeafSnap,” “NatureGate,” “Plantifier,” “PlantSnap”; Citizen science and plant identification: “iNaturalist,” “plant app,” “plant check,” “plant identification app,” “plant identifier”; Flowers that were flowering in gardens during lockdown in Poland: “fiołek” (viola), “koniczyna” (shamrock), “mlecz” (dandelion), “pierwiosnek” (primose), “stokrotka” (daisy). They are typical early-spring flowers growing in the gardens in Central Europe. We had to be more specific in this search because there are no plant species blooming across the world at the same time. These plant species have well-known biology; thus, we could easily interpret these results; Flowers that were not flowering during lockdown in Poland: “chaber” (cornflower), “mak” (poppy), “nawłoć” (goldenrod), “róża” (rose), “rumianek” (chamomile). They are typical mid-summer flowering plants often planted in gardens; Interest in traveling long distances and in social activities that involve many people: “airport,” “bus,” “café,” “driving,” “pub”; Single or mass commuting, and traveling: “bike,” “boat,” “car,” “flight,” “train”; Interest in distant places and activities for visiting natural areas: “forest,” “nature park,” “safari,” “trekking,” “trip”; Places and activities for holidays (typically located far away): “coral reef,” “rainforest,” “safari,” “savanna,” “snorkeling”; Butterfly watching: “butterfly watching,” “butterfly identification,” “butterfly app,” “butterfly net,” “butterfly guide”;

In Google Trends, we set the following filters: global search, dates: July 2016–July 2020; language: English.

During the initial outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and throughout 2020, many people around the world accumulated a considerable amount of savings. Recent estimates calculated the so-called excess savings to be as high as 7.2 percent of GDP in the United States, amounting to approximately 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars at the end of 2020. European countries also experienced a similar trend, with excess savings in Spain worth six percent of the country’s GDP, and 4.3 percent in Germany.

What are excess savings?

Excess savings can be defined as any additional amount of money that exceeds the expected value of savings during a specific period. It could sound like a paradox but, despite many people losing their jobs and businesses shutting down due to the consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, widespread lockdowns and movement restrictions drove people to reduce spending and increase savings. In fact, the measure undertaken by governments to tackle the outbreak led to saving rates reaching unprecedented heights in many countries across the world, particularly in the wealthiest economies.

What to do with all the money?

It is hard to predict how consumption behavior will develop after the restrictions are lifted and life goes back to pre-pandemic normality. However, we know that those who were able to save more money are generally high-income individuals, as was observed in Canada, for instance. This could mean that their spending will not necessarily increase significantly. Also, the results of a survey conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) in March 2021, revealed that one in ten individuals was planning to spend the additional savings accumulated during 2020, while the vast majority was inclined to keep them in their bank accounts.

Dataset

This dataset was created by Burak Batıbay

Contents

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