Gong Weigang, Ju Guodong, Zhu Meng, Wang Senhu, Guo Wei, Chen Yunsong
Department of Sociology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom.
Front Psychiatry. 2022 May 10;13:753703. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.753703. eCollection 2022.
To limit the spread of COVID-19, governments worldwide have implemented a series of lockdown policies to restrict the social activities of people. Although scholars suggest that such policies may produce negative effects on public emotions, the existing research is limited because it only provides a cross-sectional snapshot of the effect of lockdown policies in small and local samples. Using large-scale longitudinal cross-country data, the current study aims to gain a better understanding of the dynamic effect of lockdown policies on public emotions and their underlying mechanisms.
Drawing on a large-scale longitudinal data from multiple sources, the study employs fixed-effects models to analyze the association between lagged lockdown policy stringency and public negative emotions among 120 countries from February to July 2020 ( = 9,141 country-day observations). The bootstrapping mediation test is used to examine the mediation effects of increased population mobility in residential areas.
The results show a statistically significant and positive association between lagged lockdown policy stringency and general public negative emotion (standardized coefficient = 0.32, CI = 0.30-0.35, < 0.001). This pattern remains similar to other specific negative emotions, such as depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and helplessness. Moreover, the negative health effects of lockdown policy stringency are significantly mediated by increased mobility in residential areas (51-74% points, < 0.001).
The findings confirm that stringent lockdown policies have a negative effect on public emotions via confining population mobility residential areas. To tackle the COVID-19, future public health policies should pay more attention to the unintended negative consequences of lockdown measures on public emotions.
为限制新冠病毒病（COVID-19）的传播，世界各国政府实施了一系列封锁政策，以限制人们的社交活动。尽管学者们认为此类政策可能会对公众情绪产生负面影响，但现有研究有限，因为其仅提供了小范围和局部样本中封锁政策效果的横断面快照。本研究利用大规模的纵向跨国数据，旨在更好地理解封锁政策对公众情绪的动态影响及其潜在机制。
该研究利用来自多个来源的大规模纵向数据，采用固定效应模型分析2020年2月至7月期间120个国家滞后的封锁政策严格程度与公众负面情绪之间的关联（n = 9141个国家-日观测值）。采用自抽样中介检验来检验居民区人口流动性增加的中介效应。
结果显示，滞后的封锁政策严格程度与公众总体负面情绪之间存在统计学上显著的正相关（标准化系数 = 0.32，CI = 0.30 - 0.35，p < 0.001）。这种模式与其他特定的负面情绪，如抑郁、焦虑、绝望和无助，相似。此外，封锁政策严格程度对健康的负面影响在很大程度上是由居民区流动性增加介导的（51 - 74个百分点，p < 0.001）。
研究结果证实，严格的封锁政策通过限制居民区的人口流动对公众情绪产生负面影响。为应对新冠病毒病（COVID-19），未来的公共卫生政策应更加关注封锁措施对公众情绪产生的意外负面后果。
