How COVID-19 changed Italian consumers' behavior

We investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic affected people's health-related choices and spending habits in Italy, first European country to be heavily by pandemic. collected about 3000 questionnaires May June 2020 (that is, during stabilization phase that followed country's lockdown), asking questions taken from “Survey tool guidance: rapid, simple, flexible behavioural insights on COVID-19” issued World Health Organization (WHO), correlated responses with respondents' demographic socioeconomic profiles. A principal component analysis (PCA) shows three main components we label “Unusual behavior,” “Precautionary spending,” “Augmented social distancing,” which vary characteristics.