Trajectories of affective and cognitive well-being at times of COVID-19 containment policies in Italy

This paper draws on a subsample (N = 851) of respondents to ITA.LI—Italian Lives—a recently established panel study on a probability sample of individuals aged 16+ living in Italy—to track changes in the affective (positive and negative emotions such as energy and sadness) and cognitive (life satisfaction) components of well-being during different COVID-19 policy phases, classified according to the severity of key government responses.

An event-study design is employed, which uses mixed-effects ordered logistic models to investigate the change in SWB scores. Given the nested nature of the data, multilevel modeling is chosen as the most appropriate method of analysis.

The results reveal the levels of affective and cognitive well-being were significantly lower during the lockdown period than before the pandemic outbreak potentially reflecting both the direct effects of the confinement and other potential sources of distress, such as trends in infection rates and related media alarm. Once the lockdown was lifted, there was no evidence of an immediate and general improvement in well-being. In the following policy phase, with the lifting of most containment measures, there were significant signs of full recovery concerning energy, but the scores for the other well-being components remained relatively lower than those observed before the onset of COVID-19.