Lockdown, Infection, and Expressed Happiness in China

Mingming Ma, Shun Wang () and Fengyu Wu ()
Additional contact information
Mingming Ma: Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Fengyu Wu: STATEC Research, National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (STATEC)

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2024, vol. 25, issue 4, No 8, 29 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper exploits data from Sina Weibo posts to study the effect of the Wuhan lockdown on expressed happiness during the initial COVID-19 outbreak. By applying the difference-in-differences method to a city-level expressed happiness index generated by Weibo posts, we find that the announcement regarding human-to-human transmission significantly lowered expressed happiness in Wuhan relative to Chinese cities outside Hubei province, while the subsequent Wuhan lockdown had protective effects during the first 12 days. The effects on expressed happiness remained significant in the medium run toward the end of Wuhan lockdown. However, our results also suggest that the protective effects of the Wuhan lockdown declined as the lockdown continued and the risk of infection became lower. Our findings are robust to the use of alternative control groups and sample periods, different expressed happiness measures, and the potential censorship of Weibo.

Keywords: Lockdown; COVID-19; Expressed happiness; Happiness; Social media; Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-024-00752-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:25:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1007_s10902-024-00752-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-024-00752-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().