Is there a silver lining from the COVID-19 pandemic? Survey suggests yes!

While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our work lives, home lives, and daily routines, many of the resulting lifestyle changes revealed a surprising silver lining, according to a Greene Economics survey.

By Greene Economics principals Dr. Gretchen Greene, Rabia Ahmed, and Jeri Sawyer, with assistance from Karen Sullivan (UCLA economics student), Megan Sawyer, and Dr. Patricia Atkinson (economics professor, Clark College, Vancouver, WA).

While the devastation of the pandemic to our work lives, home lives, and day-to-day activities is difficult to overstate, the mere fact that we all had to make changes may have accelerated some lifestyle shifts for the better. With this unfortunate shock to our world, we had to break a lot of our habits — something very hard to do without substantial effort. In the fall of 2020, Greene Economics launched an informal survey about how the pandemic had changed people's lifestyles, and whether any of those changes might turn out to have positive impacts. The survey explored potential improvements in home life, work life, and financial and physical health.

The survey — while not drawn from a statistically random sample — helps demonstrate how change from the pandemic has brought some improvements alongside the difficulty in our lives. Below, we share the background that motivated the survey, followed by a summary of results. We welcome your comments and feedback!

Rationale for the Survey

Research suggests that people do not choose to change their lifestyle habits very often. In psychology, this resistance is known as "status quo bias" — an emotional preference for the current state of affairs in one's life and surroundings.¹ This preference for one's baseline relates not only to the "larger" details of life such as career, home, location, and family status, but also to "smaller" ones such as eating habits, socializing habits, and the stores one shops at. Status quo bias is a non-rational cognitive process, because it relies more on emotion and habit than on rational thought.²

Studies also show that loss aversion — the resistance to anything perceived as a loss — leads to greater regret over action than inaction. In other words, we experience more regret when we change our usual routine than when we maintain it.³ As a result, we tend to overemphasize the loss created by a change and avoid the perceived risk by maintaining our current or past decisions.

Then COVID-19 arrived and forced all of us to change our habits, whether we chose to or not. To prevent the spread of the virus, many people began working from home, and others lost their jobs entirely — both imposing new decisions about work, life, and day-to-day survival. As restaurants, stores, and gyms closed, people spent more time at home and adapted to new ways of socializing, eating, and exercising. Status quo bias may help explain why some people resisted social distancing, mask requirements, and travel guidance — and why some governments were willing to ignore warnings even amid dire predictions from public health officials.⁴

Whether we return to our old habits after the pandemic or continue with the new ones can tell us how much status quo bias has inhibited improved lifestyle and work choices over the years. Some large corporations, such as Facebook, announced early that they would remain virtual, suggesting remote work may become the new normal for some. Social activities such as dining out and travel, however, are more likely to return toward the pre-COVID norm once the virus is contained.

Part of the question of whether people keep their new normal or revert to the old seems to depend on how much the pandemic changed for them personally, how they perceive their new habits versus the old, and what they prioritize enough to change.

These survey results highlight how pandemic lifestyle changes affected relationships, work routines, and personal habits. Here are the results.

1. Most respondents hope to maintain at least some elements of the work life (or school life) they developed during the pandemic. This supports the idea that when we are forced to change our habits, we may find new ways of doing things that we prefer. To clarify, these results may also reflect a preference for working from home that many employers won't continue to offer once it is safe to return. One respondent offered a thoughtful comment: "I hope office jobs start to move in the direction of work-from-home models so that office spaces can be reclaimed by other businesses or turned into low-income housing." Thanks for that innovative idea!

Change in work/school life since March 2020.

What respondents hope for after the pandemic.

2. Some relationships between families and housemates improved as a result of the pandemic. About 11 percent of respondents said someone in their family had to move or relocate due to the pandemic, suggesting significant disruption. But on a positive note: while just 10 percent said their home lives had improved overall, 26 percent said their relationships with the people in their household had improved. This raises a question — does spending more time with family and housemates tend to improve relationships? Or does it point to a tendency to "make the best" of a difficult situation and perceive that things are not so bad (see #5 below)?

Change in relationships with household members since March 2020.

3. Asked how they were spending their time, respondents identified five activities where they spent more time and only three where they spent less. So do we have more time overall? The activities where people reported spending more time — "on my phone," "with family members in the same house," "watching TV," "reading," "on social media," and "gardening and home improvement" — all drew more than 43 percent. Close behind were "paying attention to news" (41 percent) and "doing outdoor activities" (39 percent). Unsurprisingly, respondents overwhelmingly reported spending less time traveling (69 percent) and less time with friends and loved ones (54 percent).

Activities where respondents spent more or less time.

4. Of those who plan to keep at least some of their pandemic cooking and eating habits, the vast majority were cooking more at home during the pandemic. These questions highlight how we may change habits involuntarily, then discover the new habit is preferable. Regarding food preparation, 67 percent of respondents reported cooking more at home during the pandemic — but only 22 percent said they would resume their earlier eating-out habits afterward.

Whether respondents will keep or resume pandemic cooking habits.

5. Maybe our social lives are not as essential to happiness as we thought. We asked respondents about their social lives, happiness, and overall mental health. While 59 percent reported that their social lives had become more difficult, only about a third reported that their personal happiness had declined since the pandemic — and about the same share reported a decline in mental health.

Change in happiness, mental health, and social life.

6. A large majority increased or maintained their income, and 39 percent decreased their expenditures — suggesting a rise in savings. Yet 48 percent reported greater concern about financial security. Most respondents (53 percent) said their income had stayed the same, with 16 percent reporting an increase and 21 percent a decrease. Meanwhile, 39 percent reported decreased expenditures, 17 percent an increase, and 28 percent no change. Overall, respondents skewed toward women, younger people (20 to 29), the middle-aged, and slightly higher-than-average income — pointing to a somewhat favorable financial situation for these groups. Even so, when asked about their own future financial security, a remarkable 48 percent reported greater concern.

Change in monthly expenditures since March 2020.

7. The pandemic led 70 percent of respondents to want to take better care of their physical health — but maybe we always plan to be healthier in the future? Given mixed changes in exercise and outdoor activity (see #3), physical health outcomes varied: 28 percent reported declines, 21 percent improvements, and 31 percent no change. Only 6 percent had ever tested positive for COVID-19 when they completed the survey, but 48 percent said someone in their close circle had. And when asked whether the pandemic had changed how they think about their health insurance choices, 33 percent said it had. That result may reflect the stark reality that getting sick can be costly — in both health care costs and lost income — prompting a recognition that staying healthier helps avoid both financial and health risks.

Summary

What do we take from this? First, the survey respondents were remarkably resilient to the changes in their lives. Most had suffered declines in the quality of their work lives, home lives, and certainly social lives. But gains generally balanced losses across nearly all areas — home life, work life, and happiness, health, and social life. This hints that the unexpected change of habits produced some improvements that could carry into our post-pandemic lives.

Might other habits warrant reconsideration? Could the reward of doing things differently outweigh the comfort of our status quo armchairs? Habits build efficiency into our daily routines, but they can also constrain our capacity to innovate and find new solutions. Perhaps this pandemic-imposed review of our lives can give us the momentum — and the courage — to reconsider other aspects of how we live: committing to that workout schedule, taking steps to mitigate climate change, or rethinking how we shape our communities.

Read the full survey. Greene Economics Pandemic Lifestyle Changes Survey (2020) — complete results with demographic breakdowns.

Greene Economics Pandemic Lifestyle Changes Survey (2020).pdf

Download PDF • 385KB

[References]

1. Samuelson, W., and R. Zeckhauser, 1988. "Status Quo Bias in Decision Making." Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1: 7–59.

2. Ibid. (Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988).

3. Korobkin, R., 1997. "The Status Quo Bias and Contract Default Rules." Cornell Law Review, 83: 608–687.

4. Gates, B., 2018. "Innovation for Pandemics." New England Journal of Medicine, 378: 2057–2060.