On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19, hereafter) had developed into a global health emergency. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Currently, COVID-19 has infected over 110 million people and resulted in over 2.1 million deaths worldwide (WHO, 2020). By the end of February, 2021, ~3,153,971 COVID-19 cases have been officially reported in Spain, over a population of 46,348,000. At least 67,636 have died due to the virus since January 3, 2020, when the first case was reported.

Moreover, given that, at the moment this article is being written, there is no effective drug for the treatment of COVID-19, whereas the vaccines developed will not be broadly available in most countries until the Spring of 2021, social distancing and gentle rule enforcement has been the most effective measures with which governments try to control the outbreak. In Spain, the state of emergency was declared on March 14, 2020, imposing a “lockdown,” during which people had to stay at home, allowed to go out only for work, buying food and satisfying essential needs like physical exercise at a maximal distance of 1 km from their permanent address. Further, starting March 30, all workers of non-essential activities were obliged to stay home until April 9. These confinement measures were progressively softened until June 21, when mobility restrictions were waived¹.

Although limiting physical contact among people is paramount in order to protect them from the pandemic, the lockdown has been often blamed for a deterioration in life quality². According to the meta-analysis by Salari et al. (2020), the recent lockdown due to COVID-19 may negatively affect people's mental health. In China, depression and anxiety effects were reported in college students (Cao et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2020), university students (Wang Y., et al., 2020) and working adults (Zhang et al., 2020) at early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. Wang Y., et al. (2020), Huang and Zhao (2020), Wang C. et al. (2020), Ahmed et al. (2020), Zhou et al. (2020), and Liu et al. (2020) reported increasing levels of depression because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging between slightly less than one fifth and half of the samples surveyed. These papers, together with Cao et al. (2020) and Qian et al. (2020) report percentages of people suffering from anxiety which range between 6 and 44%.

Regarding the relationship between sociodemographic variables and the psychological costs of COVID-19 in China, the results are mixed. Some studies have suggested than women were affected psychologically by COVID-19 more than men (Qiu et al., 2020; Wang C. et al., 2020; Wang Y., et al., 2020) but others found no significant differences between females and males (Cao et al., 2020; Huang and Zhao, 2020; Qian et al., 2020; Yang and Ma, 2020). Related to age, results obtained by Huang and Zhao (2020), Liu et al. (2020), Qiu et al. (2020), and Wang Y, et al. (2020) suggest that young subjects exhibit higher psychological costs than mature people, although results vary across studies³. In China, education levels have been found to positively (Qiu et al., 2020) or negatively (Wang Y., et al., 2020) correlate with the psychological costs, while also no effect has been reported (Qian et al., 2020). Finally, chronic disease has been found to enhance negative psychological effects during lockdown (Wang C. et al., 2020).

Concerning life satisfaction, Yang and Ma (2020) found that the pandemic in China led to a 74% decline in overall emotional well-being. Individuals who were residing near the epicenter of the outbreak, of an older age, or married, experienced a steeper decline in emotional well-being. Furthermore, Zhang et al. (2020) obtained that physically active subjects reported lower levels of life satisfaction due to the restrictions imposed.

Other Asian countries were also affected and studied. In Iran, Jahanshahi et al. (2020) found that adults experienced more distress than those in China. Moghanibashi-Mansourieh (2020) obtained that the level of anxiety was higher among Iranian women, COVID-19 informed people and younger adults. Results about gender and education are replicated for the Iraq population (Kamal and Othman, 2020) and for Nepal (Sigdel et al., 2020). Age results are mirrored for Japanese people (Ueda et al., 2020) and Indians (Kazmi et al., 2020). Other variables as perceived health conditions and perceived COVID-19 test availability are predictors of mental health problems for Malaysia citizens in Dai et al. (2020).

United Kingdom, Italy and Spain were three of the most affected European countries. In United Kingdom, Shevlin et al. (2020) analyzed the association between self-reported anxiety caused by COVID-19 and somatization, finding that anxiety contributes to experiencing somatic symptoms. In Italy, Mazza et al. (2020) found that higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress were associated with female gender and the personality domains of negative affect and detachment.

In Spain, Odriozola-González et al. (2020a) conducted a cross-sectional study where anxiety, depression and stress were observed in 32, 44, and 37% of respondents, respectively. The prevalence of these symptoms was associated with female gender, younger age and self-reported COVID-19 symptoms. In a companion paper, Odriozola-González et al. (2020b) analyze the psychological impact of COVID-19 in the university community, finding that students have been especially impacted by the first weeks of the COVID-19 confinement. Similar results were reported by et al. (2020) who explored the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the general adult population during the first stages of the outbreak in Spain. Moreover, in line with Shevlin et al. (2020) subjects' perceived health state was negatively associated with psychological impact, stress, anxiety, and other symptoms related to depression.

Finally, Blasco-Belled et al. (2020) investigated reactions to the COVID-19 outbreak and the impact on subjective well-being in a sample of 541 Spanish adults. They found that life satisfaction was predicted positively by hope about overcoming the pandemic and negatively by social phobia given that human-to-human contact can be perceived as a source of potential danger to be avoided.

Extending the aforementioned research on the psychological impact of COVID-19 in Spain, the present study examined the temporal evolution of life satisfaction during the lockdown from the first phase of the pandemic to the slow return to a new “normality.” With the exceptions of Stuchlikova et al. (2020) and Planchuelo-Gómez et al. (2020), where data concerned four and two time-frames, respectively, to our knowledge, this is the only study generating empirical evidence on daily life satisfaction over the whole period of the lockdown. Following the experience sampling method⁴, we ask participants to repeatedly self-report their feelings. De Vuyst et al. (2019) study whether using this method can in some way affect the momentary emotional self-reports of the individuals engaging in them, and thereby effectively affecting that what it tries to measure: their emotional experience over time. Their findings suggest that the repeated assessment of emotions in daily life does not influence their emotional experience throughout the response period. Moreover, this is the first paper analyzing the role of individual (incentivized) expectations about the lockdown length on the evolution of subjects' life satisfaction.

Additionally, since “many studies have highlighted significant differences in individuals' reactions to threat, according to specific personality traits” (Mazza et al., 2020) we have analyzed how subjects' personality can explain perceived life satisfaction and its evolution during lockdown.

In this section, we conduct descriptive analysis of the main variables. Additionally, we present figures showing the evolution of the main variables, like for instance the prediction of the lockdown end. After that, we present regression analysis, focusing first on the effect of lockdown-end expectation on reported daily life satisfaction. We then focus on participants' bias regarding the duration of the confinement. Lastly, we study the participants' willingness to be tested either for free or privately, paying for the test.

This study reports results on daily life satisfaction reported by a panel of adults over the entire period of lockdown in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain.

Our study presents some strengths and undoubtedly several limitations. Among the major strengths, (1) we collected data on a daily basis during the entire period of the Spanish lockdown and (2) we incentivized subjects in order to elicit predictions about the end of the lockdown. Monetary incentives have their effect through their influence on cognitive effort, motivational focus and emotional triggers. In their meta-analysis Camerer and Hogarth (1999) claim that financial incentives affect performance in judgment tasks where effort responds to incentives. However, truthful expectations reporting is only assured if all forecasters are paid according to their accuracy. Since only a limited (randomly selected) number of successful forecasters are monetarily rewarded, incentives could potentially introduce a sort of gamble where participants could be favored to report extreme beliefs in which the probability of being rewarded would be more plausible (given that the number of subjects choosing this type of option is presumably lower)¹⁴.

Among the limitations, our sample is not fully representative of the Spanish population in terms of gender, age, education and location. Regarding gender, more females (60%) than males (40%) responded the survey. Furthermore, the average age of participants in this study is under 30 years old, and more than half of the respondents have got a university degree. In terms of location, our respondents were concentrated in the Spanish region “Comunidad Valenciana” (96%), being 79% from the province of Castellón. All of the biases of the sample relate to the characteristics of our broader subject pool. However, this has made it feasible to maintain a relatively large sample of respondents engaged through a rather long and stressing period, obtaining a dynamic picture of daily life satisfaction during the COVID-19 lockdown in Spain.

On average, self-reported levels of daily life satisfaction weakly increased during the lockdown. Our analysis focuses on lockdown-end expectations, as well as personality and individual factors that can partially explain differences in reported daily life satisfaction during the lockdown. To this end, using monetary incentives we elicited subjects' expectations on the lockdown length as well as sociodemographic characteristics and personality traits.

Given the positive effect of longer lockdown expectations on daily life satisfaction, our results suggest that governments should avoid creating false expectations for a shorter lockdown. This concerns the choice between dictating a lockdown “until necessary” and fixing a particular end-day, which might be postponed later. Whereas Hubei, China was an example of the former strategy, most of the western countries, like United States, Italy, France, United Kingdom and Spain preferred the latter option. In the Spanish case, the government needed the approval of the Congress of Deputies, in order to declare the state of alarm in March 14 and expand it in 2-week periods. Following prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979; Tversky and Kahneman, 1992), prolonging the lockdown after creating the expectation that it would probably end by a certain day (interpreted as a reference point), might generate frustration if the postponement is perceived as a loss with respect to the initial expectation that works like a reference point. This hypothesis is supported by our findings. However, when failed expectations are revised by participants, their new prediction does not affect their average daily life satisfaction. This result suggests that governments should carefully manage expectations in order to avoid undesired emotional reactions to deviations from the original announcements. These findings are in line with the findings of reference-dependence framing effects related to the government's communication strategy in the COVID-19 crisis, obtained by Hameleers (2020)¹⁵ and Briscese et al. (2020).

Regarding personality traits, from the perspective of the Big Five factor model adopted here¹⁶, there are three domains affecting a respondent's reported daily life satisfaction level during confinement: Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Agreeableness. Neuroticism can be defined as the tendency to respond with negative emotions to threat, frustration, or loss (Lahey, 2009) and is one of the strongest predictors of life satisfaction¹⁷ because it significantly affects the perceived psychological costs associated to the pandemic. This hypothesis was also supported by recent studies with German samples by Kroencke et al. (2020) and Modersitzki et al. (2020), suggesting that Neuroticism had predicted more worrying and affective reactivity during the pandemic. Consistently with these results and controlling for socio-demographical factors, we find that subjects exhibiting higher levels of Neuroticism report a lower average daily life satisfaction level during confinement.

Regarding Extraversion, although it can be hypothesized that less extraverted subjects can experience higher psychological costs associated to the COVID-19 lockdown than their more extraverted counterparts, the existing evidence is mixed. Modersitzki et al.'s (2020) results suggest that more extraverted subjects present a more negative appraisal of the pandemic. Surprisingly, Folk et al. (2020) obtain that the supposed negative effect of Extraversion reverses (for a Canadian university sample) or disappears (for a sample with mostly American and British adults). Wei's (2020) results show that lower extroversion predicts more severe loneliness, anxiety, and depression during confinement. In the present study, subjects scoring higher in Extraversion report higher daily life satisfaction during confinement.

Finally, we focus on Agreeableness. Since this personality trait is usually related to pro-sociality and kindness, it is expected to yield a higher understanding and acceptance of the need for the restrictions imposed during a lockdown¹⁸. Consistent with this hypothesis, our results are in line with those obtained by Gupta and Parimal (2020) suggesting a significant positive relationship between Agreeableness and psychological well-being during the lockdown.

Policy-makers usually seek the immediate reward from announcing a short horizon for the crises they handle rather than a more realistic and longer horizon. Our findings illustrate the caveats of such an approach. The shorter the expectation the more negative the psychological impact on citizens. A more responsible and efficient management of expectations favors those who do not foresee that the crisis will not end too soon. From a decision-making point of view, this sounds like the usual choice between short and long term benefits. The present study emphasizes the benefits from longer or at least more realistic expectations. Although the final decision depends on the policy-maker's time preferences it is the collective welfare that sets the optimal time horizon. We have seen that our sample, has systematically underestimated the length of the lockdown. Therefore, we do not find evidence of “crowd wisdom” in forecasting future events (Surowiecki, 2005) implying that if any informational advantage is available to the government, this should be used in favor of longer end-of-crisis forecasts.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Laboratorio de Economia Experimental, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón-Spain. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

GS-G has contributed to the design of the survey and the experiment. He built the review of the literature, and was the main coordinator of the data analysis and the writing of the manuscript. AG-G has contributed to the design of the survey and the experiment. She was also involved in the writing of the final version of the manuscript. NG had the original idea of the study and has contributed to the design of the survey and the experiment. He was also involved in the writing of the final version of the manuscript. NH-Z has contributed to the final design, managed and created the questions, collected the data daily and analyzed the data. She built the tables and figures and was involved in the writing of the final version of manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.