The Gist: 31% of US Adults say their desire to leave the house has decreased over the past six months.

As we close out the year and breeze past the holiday season, and winter for those of us in the Northeast, many of us tend to do more inside the home. But, largely, it may not just be the colder temps causing people to stay inside. There’s a whole industry built upon the notion that people don’t want to – or aren’t – leaving the house already. It’s a real chicken and egg situation, you could say. Our access to meals, movies, and even finding that special someone is truly at our fingertips. Is this Stay-at-Home Economy driving the increase in people staying home, or is staying at home driving the increase in use of services that allow us to do so?

We recently launched the following question to gauge people’s desire to leave the house, and how, it’s changed, if at all.

As you can see, 31% of people say their desire to leave the house has decreased over the past six months. Whatever the reason may be, we’d say this is a fairly substantial percentage of the U.S. Adult population. We also found that this group is more likely to be women.

In terms of age, this group is more likely to be in the Gen X or Baby Boomer generations. These may not be the target audiences of some apps and services, but maybe they should be. 

Along the same lines as this trend, we also noticed a large increase over the years in people who say they do the majority of their holiday shopping online.

Those who are doing 75-100% of their holiday shopping online have increased by nearly 25% since 2015.

Whether all of this is a side effect of last year’s presidential election, recent mass shooting events in public spaces, or financial uneasiness, this is just a snippet of a much larger conversation. Next year we’ll bring you a webinar on the Stay-at-Home Economy, focusing on how retail, restaurant, and entertainment industries are impacted. Be on the lookout for the invite in early 2018.

And related, sign up for our first webinar of 2018, on a not all that unrelated topic. Webinar: Are We in Hell?

And for now, we hope you enjoy the rest of 2017 at home, or wherever you are.