CONSUMER spending tanked by almost one third as the public braced for lockdown, Scottish research shows.

Shoppers in the UK pulled back by as much as 32% before pandemic control measures forced the closure of almost all high street stores.

Researchers at St Andrews and Heriot Watt universities analysed 20 million anonymised transactions made by around 100,000 people during the onset and spread of Covid-19.

While overall spending plummeted, spending on groceries increased by 13-18% on a week-to-week basis for the fortnight following the World Health Organisation's pandemic announcement, then fell again after the UK lockdown began.

More was spent on dining and drinking during the early period of the virus spread, then crashed by more than 40%.

Behaviours were different between different countries and regions of the UK.

Consumers in Scotland "appear to adjust spending more markedly during the early stages of the virus outbreak", the team found.

Meanwhile, those in England's South East, South West and "especially" London reduced their non-essential spending faster than those living elsewhere.

Men were found to spend "significantly more" than women and older people spent less than younger consumers.

The work was carried out by Dr Dimitris Chronopoulos and Professor John Wilson of the Centre for Responsible Banking and Finance at St Andrews University and Dr Marcel Lukas of Heriot Watt University using data provided by Edinburgh-based financial technology firm Money Dashboard.

Lukas said: “Investigating the impact of Covid-19 on consumer spending is very challenging, given that official statistics produced by government often come with a significant time delay.

“Fortunately, recent advances in information technology and financial applications have enabled the real time collection of transaction level data which has allowed us to conduct a fine-grained analysis of patterns in consumer spending as they occur.”

Chronopoulos added: “It is becoming clear that the spread of the Covid-19 virus and the government lockdown are having significant and varied impacts on the level and composition of consumer spending patterns across Great Britain.”

Wilson added: “Our results are preliminary, but do provide a starting point for policymakers in understanding the real-time and varied impacts of Covid-19 on consumer spending.”