Chinese public’s panic buying at the beginning of COVID-19 outbreak: The contribution of perceived risk, social media use, and connection with close others

Abstract

Panic buying is a globally witnessed behavior during the outbreak of COVID-19. This consumer behavior is related to many undesirable consequences, ranging from disrupting economic stability to hindering timely provision of supplies to those in dire need. As such, to understand the causes and underlying mechanisms of panic buying is crucial. Based on terror management theory, this study examined the contribution of perceived risk, social media use, and connection with close others to panic buying. Data were collected through an online survey from 972 Chinese citizens (65.9% female, M age = 33.69 years) at the beginning period of COVID-19 in early February 2020. The results found that individuals with a higher level of perceived risk were more prone to engage in panic buying, but this link was mitigated by connection with close others when individuals less used social media. Theoretically, this study advances the understandings of the psychological processes of panic buying during health crisis. Practically, alleviating individuals’ perceived risk, establishing a healthy habit of social media use, and strengthening social ties are important to circumventing panic buying in times of COVID-19.

Buying to Cope With Scarcity During Public Emergencies: A Serial Mediation Model Based on Cognition-Affect Theory

“…Discovering the causes and underlying processes of this phenomenon is of paramount significance for both individuals and society. However, the scientific research on this topic is still in its infancy (Yuen et al, 2020;Li et al, 2021;Sherman et al, 2021) despite the increasing focus on panic buying during the recent COVID-19 outbreak. To address this issue, the current study focused on scarcity and explored how scarcity impacts panic buying from a cognition-affect pathway using big data, an online survey and behavioral experiments.…”

“…Panic buying refers to when consumers purchase an extraordinary number of items to cope with the probability of future shortages before or during a disaster or perceived disaster (Islam et al, 2020;Yuen et al, 2020;Herjanto et al, 2021). This phenomenon was globally witnessed in different countries or regions following the outbreak of COVID-19, as well as during many historical natural disasters and health crises such as SARS (Loxton et al, 2020;Li et al, 2021). This behavior has essential negative effects on social stability because it harms the balance of the supply chain, inflates prices and hinders vulnerable groups from obtaining protective resources (Yuen et al, 2020).…”

“…This behavior has essential negative effects on social stability because it harms the balance of the supply chain, inflates prices and hinders vulnerable groups from obtaining protective resources (Yuen et al, 2020). However, at present, the empirical research on the causes and psychological mechanisms of this phenomenon during public emergencies is scarce and scattered (Garbe et al, 2020;Yuen et al, 2020;Li et al, 2021). Therefore, it is vital to further determine what happens behind panic buying, especially in the context of public emergencies.…”

“…Noteworthy, while hoarding consists of not only excessive acquisitions but also difficulty discarding (Cannito et al, 2021), the term "hoarding" in the mentioned studies mainly represents excessive acquisitions. Although excessive acquisition is a main behavioral characteristic of panic buying (Yuen et al, 2020;Herjanto et al, 2021;Li et al, 2021;Omar et al, 2021;Yoshino et al, 2021), excessive acquisitions in the daily context and panic buying during public emergencies are different in many aspects, such as behavior context, consumption objects, motivation and magnitude. Panic buying is a kind of herd behavior (Gao and Liu, 2017;Di Crosta et al, 2021) aiming at essential products and necessities to cope with crises (Ballantine et al, 2014;Herjanto et al, 2021;Yoshino et al, 2021) based on utilitarian motivation (Ballantine et al, 2014), whereas daily excessive acquisition is more individual according to people's own interests based on both utilitarian and hedonic motivation (Islam et al, 2020).…”

“…During public emergencies, individuals produce compensatory consumption behaviors such as impulsive consumption to obtain perceived control (Sneath et al, 2009;Li et al, 2020). Panic buying also has a compensatory function, which allows individuals to regain control over their freedom (Gupta and Gentry, 2016) and defend against perceived risk (Li et al, 2021). Thus, perceived control appears to be a predictor of panic buying during public emergencies.…”