Stuck or protected? COVID-19 policy stringency and depressive emotions in urban China

Mixed findings are found on the psychological outcomes of anti-COVID policies during the pandemic. This study proposes a synthesized framework to connect the opposite findings and introduce a nonlinear relationship between anti-COVID policy stringency and people's subjective well-being. Employing data collected from the China Family Panel Study and the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, as well as the lagged dependent variable multilevel regression model, this study found that people's depressive emotions initially increased along policy stringency before they started to decline after a turning point. This inverted U-shaped relationship was more pronounced among males than females. Females were more likely to have positive mental reactions to stringent policies, as their subjective well-being was positively associated with the level of policy stringency. The nonlinear and gendered findings expand the understanding of people's emotional experiences during the pandemic as well as under other social crises.