Sleeplessness in COVID-19 pandemic: Lockdown and anxiety

Gaowen Kong; Dongmin Kong; Lu Shi

doi:10.1016/j.asieco.2022.101460

Sleeplessness in COVID-19 pandemic: Lockdown and anxiety

J Asian Econ. 2022 Jun:80:101460. doi: 10.1016/j.asieco.2022.101460. Epub 2022 Mar 7.

Authors

Gaowen Kong¹, Dongmin Kong², Lu Shi³

Affiliations

¹ School of Management, Guangzhou University, China.
² School of Economics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China.
³ School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, China.

Abstract

This paper investigates the sleeplessness in Chinese cities during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We provide first evidence of a link from daily COVID-19 cases resulting in sleep loss in a panel of Chinese cities. We use Wuhan, which was the first city to be completely locked down, as basis to present the result that sleeplessness has become a considerably serious issue owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. In using the intervention policy of various cities as exogenous shocks, we find that lockdown policies significantly increase the sleeplessness level of Chinese cities. In addition, the severity of COVID-19 pandemic significantly exacerbates the negative effect of lockdown policies on sleep quality in the city. Overall, this study indicates that policy makers should pay more attention to public mental health when citizens recover from COIVD-19 by investigating the unintended consequences of COVID-19 on sleeplessness level of cities.

Keywords: Baidu search index; COVID-19; Lockdown; Sleeplessness.