Irrational Consumption during the COVID-19 Period

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the world economy and has, most presumably, exerted a great deal of stress on citizens, in turn leading to the call for timely assessments of how this period might actually impact individuals at the level of everyday well-being and in their behaviors such as consumer decisions. Through one pilot study and two online survey studies, we tentatively investigated this latter question, and demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic may increase perceived stress and impair individuals’ sleep quality, which in turn impels their irrational consumption. This research provides preliminary evidence for the impact of the present pandemic on irrational consumption and contributes to the literature on stress and consumer behavior.

Risk Perception, Perceived Government Coping Validity, and Individual Response in the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic in China

“…Risk perception is an individual's perception and awareness of objective risks in the outside world, emphasizing the influence of individual experience gained from intuitive judgments and subjective feelings on individual cognition. After the experience gained through perception was fed back to the individual, people inferred the feasibility of the experience and then took following action [24]. Many studies examined the relationship between individual responses and risk perception.…”

Towards a Sustainability-Based Society: An Analysis of Fundamental Values from the Perspective of Economics and Philosophy

“…In addition to green capitalism and circularity, in recent years, actions have been taken toward achieving a collaborative economy to tackle hyper-consumerism and the irrational consumption of goods [37,38]; however, these actions have been successfully reframed by regime actors as purely economic activity, and are, thus, unlikely to lead to sustainability [39]. Based on reports that monitor the implementation of TBL approaches in European public planning [28,29], and on principles of sustainability science [14], it was deduced that the most difficult challenges of TBL approaches that currently hinder their implementation under the global economic model are, first, a persistent public effort for economic growth, despite the negative environmental, social, and economic aspects of such growth, as described above, and, second, a lack of effective monitoring and tracking of sustainability-based goals.…”

“…In addition to green capitalism and circularity, in recent years, actions have been taken toward achieving a collaborative economy to tackle hyper-consumerism and the irrational consumption of goods [37,38]; however, these actions have been successfully reframed by regime actors as purely economic activity, and are, thus, unlikely to lead to sustainability [39].…”

“…The first issue concerns the functioning of the consumption model and the materialistic consumption patterns that constitute it. For this sustainability vision to thrive, consumers have to move away from materialistic goals in consumption, and towards more humanistic values; it is important to understand the irrational part of consumer behaviour, and the social fears and complexes behind it [37,38]. Such change might require a re-invention of the ways of constituting a human person, which might involve the method of philosophical phenomenology.…”