Lockdown was a vacation for many: IIM Lucknow study

In the initial phases of the national lockdown, not everyone was upset at being forced to stay at home.

The majority of the people were happy at getting more family time, working from home in pyjamas and not having to face traffic snarls on the way from home to office.

These are the findings of a pan-India online study conducted by the Centre for Marketing in Emerging Economies (CMEE) at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L), in collaboration with Qualisys.

The study was conducted online earlier this month with nearly 931 respondents of whom 13 per cent reported to be happy because they felt that the lockdown time was like an unplanned vacation. Most of them, at that point of time, had not faced the economic consequences of the lockdown.

Prof Satyabhusan Dash, IIM Lucknow, who led the research study said that 56 per cent of these happy people tried out new dishes and 38 per cent of them spoke on the phone to friends and relatives, something they were not able to do earlier.

Many of them pursued their hobbies and some made up on sleep deficit.

"Happiness is a frame of mind and once the factors that contributed to that happiness change, the mood could change. But it was interesting to see that some viewed lockdown like a vacation," he added.

Expectedly, people with a higher income had a higher happiness quotient. Nearly 15 per cent of all those who earned over Rs 10 lakh annually were happy as compared to only 7 per cent who earned less than Rs 10 lakh per annum.

However, being happy did not mean that people were not worried about the current pandemic.

Nearly 52 per cent were very worried about the prevailing situation yet they managed to stay in a happy state of mind.

The study also found that 40 per cent of the total sample size said it was fearful, 22 per cent felt sad, 11 per cent respondents felt disgusted, 9 per cent were surprised and 5 per cent felt angry.

The participants in the study were from 23 states and 104 cities in India across metros, tier-1 and tier-2 cities.

Snowball sampling methods were used to cover a fairly representative sample across India.

Given the nature of these platforms, the survey has a skew predominantly towards males (62 per cent) versus females (38 per cent), higher education (63 per cent post-graduation and over) and upper income participants with 40 per cent earning more than Rs 10 lakh annually.