Search results

Background: This work is a situation analysis of reported human rights abuses that have characterized the COVID-19 controls and lockdown in some countries of the world. This is as documented by reliable mass media sources, relevant international organizations and human rights non-governmental organizations between January 2020 to April 2020.

Methods: A combined content analysis, critical analysis, and doctrinal method is applied in this study in line with the reproducible research process. It is a secondary-data-based situation analysis study, conducted through a qualitative research approach.

Findings: The findings revealed among other things that: COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews' enforcement by law enforcement officers contravened some people's fundamental human rights within the first month. Security forces employed overt and immoderate forces to implement the orders. The lockdown and curfew enforcements were not significantly respectful of human life and human dignity. The COVID-19 emergency declarations in some countries were discriminatory against minorities and vulnerable groups in some countries.

Research limitations/implications: This report is based on data from investigative journalism and opinions of the United Nations and international human rights organizations, and not on police investigations or reports. The implication of the study is that if social marketing orientations and risk communication and community engagement attitudes were given to the law enforcement officers implementing the COVID-19 lockdowns and or curfews, the human rights and humanitarian rights breaches witnessed would have been avoided or drastically minimized.

Originality: The originality of this review is that it is the first to undertake a situation analysis of the COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews human rights abuses in some countries. The study portrayed the poor level of social marketing orientations and risk communication and community engagement attitudes amongst law enforcement officers, culminating in the frosty police-public relationships.

This article analyzes the challenges Finnish single mothers experienced in their everyday lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. In studies on challenges to family life during COVID-19 lockdowns, single-parent families remain a largely understudied group.

The authors apply triple bind theory and ask how did Finnish single mothers manage the interplay between inadequate resources, inadequate employment, and inadequate policies during lockdown in spring 2020? These data come from an online survey including both qualitative and quantitative questions which was conducted between April and May 2020 to gather Finnish families' experiences during lockdown. This analysis is based on the qualitative part of the survey.

This study's results show that lockdown created new inadequacies while also enhancing some old inadequacies in the lives of Finnish single mothers. During lockdown, single mothers faced policy- and resource-disappearances; accordingly, they lost their ability to do paid work normally. Furthermore, these disappearances endangered the well-being of some single mothers and their families.

This article contributes to the wider understanding of everyday lives of single mothers and the challenges COVID-19 pandemic created. Moreover, this study provides knowledge on the applicability of the triple bind theory when studying the everyday lives of single mothers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected women in unique gender-specific ways, particularly their traditional status as home managers. This study aims to draw on the role theory to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women's work–family balance during the lockdown.

The current COVID-19 pandemic, which has altered the ways in which we live and work, requires specific methodological tools to be understood. The authors, therefore, opted for an interpretive–constructivist and constructivist–phenomenologist approach. The dataset, thus, comprises of semi-structured interviews with 26 working women in the UK.

The findings illustrate how the COVID-19 lockdown has intensified British women's domestic workload and has, thus, caused unbridled role conflict, which has further been exacerbated by structural and interactional roles undertaken by women, especially during the lockdown. Remote working has contributed to women's role congestion and role conflict and poses severe challenges to role differentiation. Furthermore, we found that the lockdown has facilitated the rediscovery of family values and closeness, which is connected to the decline in juvenile delinquency and low crime rate that has resulted from the lockdown.

Through the lens of the role theory, this study concludes that the cohabitation of work and family duties within the domestic space undermines the ability to achieve work–family balance and role differentiation due to the occurrence of inter-role conflicts. This study enriches our understanding of the effect of remote working on female employees' work–family balance during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

The study aims to investigate organization interventions experienced by employees during the lockdown for Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), and the effect of these organization interventions on hope.

The respondents for the study were employees in full-time white-collar or professional job positions; they performed their job roles by way of work from home (WFH) in Sri Lanka during the COVID-19 lockdown. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

Results showed that employees maintained high levels of hope while working from home. The study identified four organization interventions that (a) promote collaborative and coordinated work, (b) promote meaningful goals and a sense of social support, (c) alleviate psychological strain and (d) assist in maintaining physical health. These four organization interventions increased hope during the COVID-19 lockdown while working from home.

The literature calls for research on intervention studies explaining the promotion of hope. The present study was built on the theories of positive organizational behaviour, conservation of resources theory and hope theory. The findings support that these three traditional theories have lasting theoretical resonance in explaining present-day phenomena with unique applications.

This paper aims to provide swift feedback to readers and investors on the early effect of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak on tourism industry.

Three leading consolidators of hotel accommodations, airline tickets and travel services in the tourism industry around the globe, namely, Booking Holdings Inc., Expedia Group and Trip.com Group Ltd. are chosen in this study. First, numerical description is performed on their shares prices and a set of control variables to compare their performances before and during the lockdown because of COVID-19 outbreak. Next, this paper estimates ordinary least squares models with and without exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic specification to establish the nature, significance and magnitude of the pandemic’s early effect on the shares performance of these online travel companies (OTCs).

This paper discovers a rapid decline in the performance of tourism industry amid the pandemic outbreak, from the perspective of three leading OTCs, which derive their profits from tourists by providing them online hotel reservation, air-ticketing and packaged-tour business services around the globe. These significant adverse direct and indirect effects testify that tourism-related businesses are extensively locked down by the pandemic outbreak.

Future studies are encouraged to examine each of the tourism sectors for individual effects.

This paper provides implications for investors to protect their wealth, and for policymakers to ensure sustainability of tourism industry in the pandemic outbreak and in the future.

From the perspective of corporate finance, this paper empirically quantifies the early effect of COVID-19 on tourism industry for a quick snapshot.

The emergence of COVID-19 and its spread led to severe social, economic and livelihood impacts around the world. This study documented the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdown on the lower-income groups. Also illustrated the impacts on the attainment of SDGs in the context of the slums of Chittagong City.

Both qualitative and quantitative data have been collected from the 150 respondents through questionnaire surveys in the slums.

The lockdown led to the decrease of 90% of the respondents' income level and affected the livelihoods of 97.33% of the respondents, with an overall score of 3.22 ± 0.67 on a four-point Likert-type scale. About 96.67% of respondents' psychological conditions have been affected high to extreme, with an overall score of 3.19 ± 0.68. The pandemic affected 74.67% of respondents' food habits, 95.33% of respondents' child education, increased domestic violence and deteriorated social security, basic service facilities and hygiene practices among the slum dwellers. The severity of COVID-19 outbreaks on the lower-income people makes it critical for the government to attain the SDG 1, SDG 2, SDG 3, SDG 4, SDG 5 (Target 5.1, 5.2) SDG 6 and SDG 16.

The findings of the study will help governments, policymakers, international organizations to adopt measures to mitigate the effects of the outbreaks.

Apples have always been considered a healthy product able to provide curative properties to consumers. In Italy, there is a long tradition of apple consumption and production both as a fresh product and as processed food. However, as with many other products, the consumption of fruits and vegetables and, more specifically apples, has been drastically affected by the first lockdown in 2020. In this project, the authors investigate whether the change in consumption habits had long-lasting consequences beyond 2020 and what are the main eating motivations, food-related behavior and socio-demographic affecting the consumption of fruits and vegetables after the pandemic.

The authors ran two online surveys with 1,000 Italian consumers across a year (from October 2021 to December 2022). In the study, participants answered questions about their consumption habits and their eating motives. Out of 1,000 consumers, the authors included in the final analysis only the participants who answered both surveys, leaving a final sample of 651 consumers.

The results show that participants have allocated more budget to fruit and vegetables after the lockdown than before it. Moreover, consumers reported an average increase in the consumption of apples. However, the increase was more pronounced for people aged between 30 and 50 years old and identified as female. After showing the difference across time, a cluster analysis identified three main segments that differ in their eating motives, place of purchase and area of residence.

Overall, the results contribute to a better understanding of how the global pandemic is still affecting people's daily life. Moreover, the findings can be used to guide the marketing and communication strategies of companies in the food sector.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates changes in the consumption of fruits and vegetables, and, more specifically, apples, in Italy more than one year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the study proposes a classification of consumers based on their habits in a time frame during which the COVID-19 wave was at its bottom which is not currently present in the literature.

Building on Kavaratzis and Hatch’s (2013) identity-based place branding model, this paper aims to explore the spatial and social dimensions of the place brand identity formation process and how residents used social media to participate in the process of shaping a city brand during a crisis.

Adopting an interpretive and social constructionist approach, this study analyses a sample of 187 short videos created and posted by Wuhan residents on the social media app Douyin during a COVID-19 lockdown. The authors read the videos as cultural texts and analysed underlying social processes in the construction of place brand identity by residents.

This study develops an adapted conceptual model of place identity formation unfolding in four sub-processes: expressing, impressing, mirroring and reflecting, and each sub-process subsumes two dimensions: the social and the spatial. In addition, this study empirically describes how residents participated in place branding processes in two ways, namely, their construction of city brand identity via communicative practice and their exertion of changes to a city brand during a crisis. The model reveals how place brands emerge and can be transformed.

This paper amplifies Kavaratzis and Hatch's (2013) identity-based place branding model by testing it in an empirical study and highlighting the social and spatial dimensions. This paper contributes to research about participatory place branding by exploring how residents participated in the place branding process. This study analysed short videos on social media, a new communication format, rather than textual narratives dominating past studies.

This study aims to explore public coping strategies with government-imposed lockdown restrictions (i.e. forced compliance) due to a health crisis (i.e. COVID-19). This directly impacts the public's power, as they may feel alienated from their environment and from others. Consequently, this study explores the relationships between the public's power, quality of life and crisis-coping strategies. This is important to help governments understand public discourse surrounding perceived government health crisis communication, which aids effective policy development.

An online questionnaire distributed via Qualtrics received 371 responses from the South African public and structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate the public's experience of powerlessness and resulting information-sharing, negative word-of-mouth and support-seeking as crisis coping strategies in response to government-imposed lockdown restrictions.

The public's perspective on health crisis communication used in this study sheds light on adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies that the public employs due to the alienation they feel during a health crisis with government-forced compliance. The findings add to the sparse research on crisis communication from the public perspective in a developing country context and provide insights for governments in developing health crisis communication strategies. The results give insight into developing policies related to community engagement and citizen participation during a pandemic.

Coronavirus disease 2019 is a global public health emergency affecting almost the entire world. The exponential spread of the infection has become a matter of concern. The study aims to determine how well people in India know about COVID-19 outbreak and actions taken to cope up during lockdown.

A total of 5,000 randomly selected participants were sent the survey link, of which 1,526 responded (response rate of 30.5%). The survey was conducted from March 28 till March 31, 2020. The 20-item questionnaire aimed to determine how well people know about COVID-19 outbreak as well as actions taken to cope up during the lockdown. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the findings.

Participants exhibited good knowledge about the primary and secondary symptoms of COVID-19 and infection spread. Over 95% participants knew preventive measures such as use of masks, sanitizers and hand wash. And, 80% of the participants felt that steps taken by the government are effective, while 93% opined that lockdown would be effective. There was apprehension regarding the infection spread, its containment and age group affected. Over 60% referred the World Health Organization website as their source of information. During the lockdown, participants engaged in home-based exercise (39%) and yoga (28%) for fitness while used social media (64%) and television (63%) for entertainment.

Although participants exhibited good knowledge related to symptoms and preventive measure related to COVID-19, the beliefs related to infection spread and containment need to be addressed. These should be targeted through health promotional campaigns focusing on mental health and home-based physical activities.