COVID-19: THE IMPACT OF A LOCKDOWN ON ADDICTIVE BEHAVIOUR OF WOMEN AND MEN

The paper presents the analysis of the lockdown impact on developing addictive behaviour with respect to the gender. This analysis is based on the data generated by the online survey made in France during the spring 2020 lockdown. The dataset contains information about people’s emotional states and reactions to these states in the context of potentially developing addictions either to substances or to certain behaviours.The empirical results suggest that in the condition of the lockdown majority of men and women in the given sample experienced emotions like boredom, emptiness and stress. Many of them also reported to be more nervous, sad and discouraged. The tendency to overcome negative emotions with the help of activity that does not require creative skills, increase the probability for a person to develop a habit and eventually become addicted to this activity. The main findings are that men are more prone for such behavioural addictions as playing video games, while women are more likely to develop food and smartphone addiction.