Title: Unlocking happiness: people's engagement for mental well-being during the lockdown of the COVID-19 outbreak

Authors: Prakashkumar Patel; Hardik Bhadeshiya; Baxiskumar Patel

Addresses: Faculty of Commerce, Department of Commerce and Business Management, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Sayajigunj, Vadodara, Gujarat-390002, India ' Faculty of Commerce, Department of Commerce and Business Management, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Sayajigunj, Vadodara, Gujarat-390002, India ' Faculty of Commerce, Department of Commerce and Business Management, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Sayajigunj, Vadodara, Gujarat-390002, India

Abstract: The COVID-19 lockdown has its own set of problems for the people. However, the lockdown opened many gateways for the people to make themselves happy and active in their liking. This exploratory research study has also attended to identify the constructs related to happiness resulting from lockdown. For this expressive exploration, the research was carried out on 506 respondents from the Gujarat state of India through a structured questionnaire, followed by information processing. The data was processed by applying the Kruskal Wallis test and Mann Whitney U test to derive the conclusion. When the questionnaire was administered, open-ended questions were asked to the respondents. They revealed that even in the tough time of the COVID-19 outbreak, they identified various activities that cater to happiness and chose to keep themselves engaged in motivating themselves to fight against a hard time as a ray of hope!

Keywords: COVID-19; happiness; lockdown; leisure time activity; mental-wellbeing; Gujarat; India; mental health; people's engagement; psychological well-being.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHD.2022.128035

International Journal of Happiness and Development, 2022 Vol.7 No.4, pp.367 - 379

Received: 09 Jul 2021
Received in revised form: 21 Apr 2022
Accepted: 01 May 2022

Published online: 04 Jan 2023 *

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