Exploring the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on Americans time use related subjective well-being

Keywords: time use survey, subjective well-being, COVID-19, sequence analysis
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In this study, the most recent American Time Use Surveys containing reported activity-based emotions and sensations information before (10,378 respondents in 2013) and during (6,902 respondents in 2021) the COVID-19 pandemic are used to assess if time use related individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB) decreased in the pandemic. Given that the coronavirus has been shown to strongly influence activity decisions and social interactions, sequence analysis is applied to find daily time allocation patterns and changes in daily time allocation. Then, those derived daily patterns and other activity-travel factors, as well as social and demographic, temporal, spatial, and other contextual characteristics are added as explanatory variables in regression models of SWB measures. This provides a holistic framework of pandemic impacts on activity-travel schedules and SWB changes while controlling for contexts such as the living environment and daily schedules of activity and travel. The results show that respondents in the COVID year reported a new time allocation pattern that has a substantial amount of time at home and they experienced more negative emotions. Three relatively happier COVID-19 daily patterns contained substantial amounts of outdoor activities. In addition, no significant correlation was observed between metropolitan areas and individuals’ SWB in 2021. However, comparisons among states show Texas and Florida residents experienced more positive well-being presumably due to fewer COVID-related restrictions.