Introduction
The spread of COVID-19 has changed the lifestyles of people all over the world [1]. Restrictions of movements and inter-individual physical contact have been widely implemented [2], and a variety of prevention measures have been encouraged [3]. The current study focuses on such changes brought to Japanese people’s daily behaviors by the pandemic. In recent years, many studies have been vigorously investigating behavioral changes brought by the pandemic, and most of them highlight their impacts on mental health. For example, participation in physical exercises has significantly reduced since the virus outbreak, which is strongly associated with mental health deterioration [4-6]. Time spent on sedentary behaviors and internet use, on the contrary, greatly increased, and they are also reported to enhance mental illness symptoms [5,7]. Another line of research on behavior changes focuses on prevention behaviors such as mask-wearing and hand washing. While engaging in the prevention behaviors is becoming a new social norm worldwide [8-10], the extent of engagement appears to be influenced by age [11], perceived risk of COVID-19 [12], and personality [13].
Instead of investigating the psychological impacts of behavior changes, the present research aimed to describe the dynamics of changes experienced by people of different ages and gender, varying in their family structures and socio-economic backgrounds. The study aims to reveal how those demographic features mediate the behavior changes caused by the pandemic. Investigating the influence of demography on behavior change is vital because our lifestyles are, at least to some extent, determined by it. For example, the pandemic has reduced people’s opportunities to exercise [6], but their frequency is likely influenced by their age, gender, and possibly family structures. Indeed, females engage in physical exercises generally less than males [14], and thus, the impact of the pandemic on males and females is not identical [4].
Targeting a wide variety of activities is also very important to grasp the actual lifestyle changes people have been experiencing. It is, however, difficult for researchers to investigate many behaviors at once in a study, and thus, most of them only target pre-selected behaviors. The most common way to assess behavior changes among the pandemic-related research is to present participants with multiple-choice questions about those selected behaviors. The questions are often about the frequency or duration of specific activities, and participants select answers describing their state before and during the pandemic [4-6,15,16]. However, with the multiple-choice method, only a limited number of behaviors can be measured, and it is insufficient for the current research purpose. Thus, the present research used a free-response method.
This study asked participants to report activities they often engage in. Precisely, participants wrote down up to ten activities that are practiced most often in their daily lives. Approximately 300 Japanese adults in various age groups participated in the survey conducted in February 2021. Firstly, they were asked to recall their life before the COVID-19 outbreak to produce responses. Once they have done so, they responded about their current behaviors. The appearance rate of each behavior before and after the outbreak was compared. This procedure does not limit the target behaviors to those in the mind of the researchers. Although this method does not precisely record the frequency of particular action being performed, the responses should reflect participants’ subjective significance of the behaviors and their frequency in occurrence. Consequently, the results will provide a broader picture of behavioral changes experienced by people with varying demographics.