Panic Buying: Perspectives and Prevention (SpringerBriefs in Psychology) 3030707253, 9783030707255

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN PSYCHOLOGY

S.M. Yasir Arafat Sujita Kumar Kar Russell Kabir  Editors

Panic Buying Perspectives and Prevention

SpringerBriefs in Psychology

SpringerBriefs present concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical applications across a wide spectrum of fields. Featuring compact volumes of 50 to 125 pages, the series covers a range of content from professional to academic. Typical topics might include: • A timely report of state-of-the-art analytical techniques • A bridge between new research results as published in journal articles and a contextual literature review • A snapshot of a hot or emerging topic • An in-depth case study or clinical example • A presentation of core concepts that readers must understand to make independent contributions SpringerBriefs in Psychology showcase emerging theory, empirical research, and practical application in a wide variety of topics in psychology and related fields. Briefs are characterized by fast, global electronic dissemination, standard publishing contracts, standardized manuscript preparation and formatting guidelines, and expedited production schedules. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10143

S. M. Yasir Arafat  •  Sujita Kumar Kar Russell Kabir Editors

Panic Buying Perspectives and Prevention

Editors S. M. Yasir Arafat Department of Psychiatry Enam Medical College and Hospital Dhaka, Bangladesh

Sujita Kumar Kar Department of Psychiatry King George’s Medical University Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Russell Kabir School of Allied Health Anglia Ruskin University Chelmsford, UK

ISSN 2192-8363     ISSN 2192-8371 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Psychology ISBN 978-3-030-70725-5    ISBN 978-3-030-70726-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70726-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To our kids Yashfi Islam Orhan Adri Advik Kar Mahneera Kabir

Preface

Panic buying has been traced since long back in response to adverse stimuli, though it got prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been reported in about 100 countries during this pandemic. As an issue, it covers multiple domains of life as well as academic areas such as public health, disaster and emergency preparedness, supply chain management, mass media and communication, behavioral science, and social science. However, there is an extreme dearth of empirical studies on causal perspectives and preventive measures. The available evidence discussed it as a contextual issue, superficially and sparsely. Therefore, we aim to explore the different perspectives and preventive approaches of panic buying as much as possible from the existing evidence, which could benefit the stakeholders, students, and researchers and can act as a reference. We aim to discuss its historical distribution, psychological explanations, sociological aspects, business (marketing, supply chain, industrial buying) dimensions, economics, relation with disaster and emergency preparedness, and preventive strategies. This book is the first of its kind of approach to organizing the possible thoughts on different perspectives of panic buying which is supposed to open a new avenue of research for stakeholders such as researchers, students, academics, and professionals. Although the panic buying phenomenon is known to have occurred in history during times of disaster and emergencies, substantial research related to panic buying occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and the phenomenon got larger attention. This book may help in understanding the phenomenon of “panic buying” comprehensively, so that appropriate remedial measures may be taken during future pandemics and public emergency situations.

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Contents

 Behavioural Perspectives of Panic Buying����������������������������������������������������    1 Sheikh Shoib and S. M. Yasir Arafat  Predictors of Panic Buying������������������������������������������������������������������������������   13 Jai Singh, Pankaj Kumar, and Sujita Kumar Kar  Healthcare Perspectives of Panic Buying������������������������������������������������������   35 Aishwariya Brigit George and Amit Singh  Emergency Preparedness and Panic Buying ������������������������������������������������   53 Angi Alradie-Mohammed and Russell Kabir  Mass Media and Panic Buying������������������������������������������������������������������������   65 S. M. Yasir Arafat, Md. Aminul Islam, and Sujita Kumar Kar  Social Perspectives of Panic Buying ��������������������������������������������������������������   81 Pawan Sharma and Manjila Pokharel  Business Perspectives of Panic Buying����������������������������������������������������������   93 S. M. Yasir Arafat, Sujita Kumar Kar, and Muhammad Aminuzzaman  Prevention of Panic Buying ����������������������������������������������������������������������������  103 Vikas Menon and Natarajan Varadharajan  Historical Perspectives of Panic Buying��������������������������������������������������������  115 Aditya Somani and Ajay Kumar Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  125

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About the Editor

Dr. S. M. Yasir Arafat is currently working as assistant professor of psychiatry at Enam Medical College and Hospital, Dhaka-1340, Bangladesh. He is dedicated to focusing on the epidemiological aspects of mental disorders and human behaviors. He has completed MD in psychiatry from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from the Dhaka Medical College, Dhaka. He also holds an MPH in health economics and MBA in marketing. Dr. Arafat has authored/coauthored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and four book chapters. Dr. Sujita Kumar Kar is currently working as associate professor of psychiatry at King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. He is the editor-­ in-­chief of the Indian Journal of Health, Sexuality and Culture. He is also editorial board member and reviewer of various national and international journals. He has written 29 book chapters and more than 200 articles in various national and international journals, and made 63 presentations in various national and international conferences. His research interests include brain stimulation, neuropsychiatry, psychosexual disorders, and cognitive behavior therapy. Dr. Russell Kabir is an academic and public health researcher. He has been working as a senior lecturer in research methods and course leader of MSc public health at Anglia Ruskin University, UK.  He obtained his PhD degree from Middlesex University, UK, in 2014. He completed his MSc in research methods at the same university in 2011. His first degree was Bachelor of Dental Surgery from the University of Dhaka in 2004. Dr. Kabir has authored/co-authored many journal articles and book chapters. He is currently serving as an academic editor of PLOS One, Journal of Perioperative Practice, and Rural and Remote Health Journal. He is a member of the International Epidemiological Association and a fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK. Dr. Kabir is interested to perform collaborative and interdisciplinary research in public health issues with a special focus on maternal health, climate change, and health and dental public health issues.

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List of Figures

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

The causal model of panic buying. (Adapted from Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020; p 5)����������������    3 Online group cognitive model for panic buying (Adapted from Kar et al., 2020, p 608; copyright permitted: 4942200586394)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������    9 Graphical representation of various factors predicting panic buying behavior�����������������������������������������������������������������������   15 Factors influencing consumer buying decision���������������������������������   23

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Effect of panic buying on health and healthcare�������������������������������   38 Panic buying of healthcare products during COVID-19 pandemic������������������������������������������������������������������������   39

Fig. 1

Emergency preparedness levels and steps�����������������������������������������   56

Fig. 1

Theories explaining the role of media in panic buying���������������������   67

Fig. 1

Social theories for explanation of panic buying��������������������������������   86

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Risk factors of panic buying�������������������������������������������������������������   94 Psychological and contextual factors influencing panic buying�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   96

Fig. 1

Transactional model of stress in terms of pandemic/disaster and preventive measures (based on Lazarus and Folkman 1984)����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  110

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Factors leading to panic buying��������������������������������������������������������  119 Implications of understanding the history of panic buying��������������  122

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List of Tables

Table 1 Table 2

Differences between stockpiling during emergency preparedness and panic buying�������������������������������������������������������   57 Factors affecting preparedness for emergencies versus factors influencing panic buying����������������������������������������������������   58

Table 1

Characteristics of panic buying news report�����������������������������������   75

Table 1

Prevention of panic buying�������������������������������������������������������������   89

Table 1

Components of responsible media reporting of panic buying (Arafat et al. 2020d)�����������������������������������������������������������  107

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Behavioural Perspectives of Panic Buying Sheikh Shoib and S. M. Yasir Arafat

1  Introduction A wide variety of behavioural changes occur following natural disasters and during health crisis that potentially interrupts social life and causes a myriad of challenges. Panic buying (PB), also known as irrational stockpiling, stock-home syndrome, hoarding, or panic purchasing, is one of the several erratic human behaviours during crises (Arafat et al., 2020; Leach, 1994). Till now, it has not been considered as a psychiatric disorder and robust empirical studies are warranted to decide on that (Kar, Menon, & Arafat, 2020). Previous researchers have defined it as an episode of a sudden rise in the purchase of a few basic goods in a surplus of the ordinary needs provoked by hardship, generally a catastrophe or an epidemic which has led to the imbalance between demand and delivery (Arafat et al., 2020). Panic buying occurs when buyers purchase an unusually large amount of goods in anticipation of or after a disaster or perceived disaster or anticipation of a shortage of products or a large price (Chen et al., 2020). A large amount of bizarre range of products is purchased in expectation of or during a crisis or perceived crisis by customers in PB (Yuen, Wang, Ma, & Li, 2020). The result is large quantities of supplies (medical and other necessities) are procured from sellers leading to unavailability, supply shortfall, and chain difficulties of these necessities to vulnerable groups like the elderly population. Thus, PB is increased in frequency, whenever shoppers assume goods to turn inaccessible or scarcity of goods (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et  al., 2020; Besson, 2020). It causes a disruption of supply chains and poses challenges in areas like ordering, replenishment, and distribution of goods and hence S. Shoib Department of Psychiatry, Jawahar Lal Nehru Memorial Hospital (JLNMH), Rainawari, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India S. M. Y. Arafat () Department of Psychiatry, Enam Medical College and Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Y. Arafat et al. (eds.), Panic Buying, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70726-2_1

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aggravates the stock-out situations and increasing prices of goods (Yuen et  al., 2020). It is more challenging and demanding for disaster management as it affects multiple domains of life including society, the economy, and local communities. It has a marked effect on retail operations in immediate and long-term mode (Hendricks, Jacobs, & Singhal, 2020). It differs from store or brand promotion induced stockpiling, as it is based on the unwarranted, irrational build-up of goods for decreasing possible damages. The history of panic buying is old and dates to the Spanish flu of 1918, the pandemic flu of 1968, the Great Famine of Britain and Wales in 1315-17 (Arafat, Kar, & Shoib, 2020). Recently it was observed in at least 93 countries of the world such as Singapore, Japan, Australia, Italy, Spain, Britain, USA, Mexico, France, Egypt, Philippines, Hong Kong, and North Korea (Arafat et al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020; Sim, Chua, Vieta, & Fernandez, 2020). In the recent past, there had been a massive panic buying of bottled water in almost all impacted regions of the US during Continental Hurricanes like Ike (2008), Irene (2011), Sandy (2012), and Arthur (2014) (Hendricks et al., 2020). In the Asian continent, stockpiling of rice and grains were observed during disasters in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam to cope with supply shortage of foods (Hu, Gurnani, & Wang, 2013). Panic buying covers multiple domains of life and academic arena (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). Theoretically, it is shaped by social status, cultural values, personality construct, and environmental stimuli such as adversities (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020). Although newer research is coming out, there is a dearth of empirical view of the literature exploring the behavioural factors responsible for panic buying. The current chapter is aimed to discuss the important attributional behavioural aspects of panic buying, their consequence, and various strategies for controlling the episodes.

2  Attributing Behavioural Factors to Panic Buying There is a myriad of behavioural factors associated with panic buying. However, there is a handful of empirical researches available to assess the behavioural perspectives of panic buying. The reason is that the panic buying phenomenon is unpredictable, sporadic, irregular, and largely occurs during crisis settings (Arafat, Kar, & Shoib, 2020). The first empirical study assessing the media reports of panic buying conducted by Arafat and his colleagues showed a perception of shortage (75%), increased demand (66.07%), the necessity of products (45.02%), and anticipation of price increase (23.33%), COVID-19 and its related factors (13.21%) are important attributing factors. Other stated reasons were rumor, maladaptive behaviour in response to the adversities (to ensure safety, to avoid uncertainty, to reduce anxiety, to take control over environment), herd mentality, lack of faith, sudden declarations from the authority, and previous experiences (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-­ Mohamed, et  al., 2020). Interestingly, all the factors have a strong behavioural

Behavioural Perspectives of Panic Buying

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influence on PB.  Other authors also postulated responsible factors such as the a sense of shortage, fear of losing command over the environment, and feeling of insecurity, social learning, primitive survival acts, coping strategy, anxiety reduction, and lack of trust in the authority (Arafat et al., 2020; Sim et al., 2020). Again, all the identified factors have a strong behavioural component to influence the PB episodes. A recent systematic review identified four important factors: A) perceived threat and scarcity, B) fear of unknown caused by indecision and emotional burden, C) copying behaviour, and D) social and psychological factors (Yuen et al., 2020). These factors also have behavioural influence on the episode. However, few authors believe that PB is a herd behaviour and cited supply chain disruption as the causative factor for panic buying (Singh & Rakshit, 2020; Tsao, Raj, & Yu, 2019). Arafat and his colleagues postulated that various initiating events act as the primary responsible factor; psychological interaction, socio-cultural norms, and information system act as the secondary factors; and finally, other factors such as the perceived scarcity, sudden increase in demand, the utility of the goods, and anticipation of the price increase act as the tertiary factors (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-­ Mohamed, et al., 2020). There is a composite relationship among the responsible factors influencing each other in the level of primary, secondary, and tertiary factors constantly (Fig.  1). Few researchers called it an expression of core conflict and

Fig. 1  The causal model of panic buying. (Adapted from Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020; p 5)

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ambiguity during the emergency (COVID-19 pandemic), a means of surviving with a traumatic condition and securing control (Sim et al., 2020).

2.1  Perception of the Scarcity of Products There is a perceived scarcity of products connected to psychological reaction that heralds to panic buying during the period of crisis (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-­ Mohamed, et al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Marthoenis, et al., 2020; Sim et al., 2020; Sterman & Dogan, 2015; Yuen et al., 2020). Another theory that explained perceived scarcity is that anticipated regret and anticipated emotions are exhibited from rejection options (Wang, Liu, & Zhang, 2019).

2.2  Perception of the Danger and Health Crisis There is an altered perception of stimuli during emergencies like COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, and the degree of deviated behaviour depends upon his appraisal of threat. Hoarding behaviour is one of the behaviours witnessed during or after an emergency and is considered a self-protective behaviour for reducing risk (Sheu & Kuo, 2020). The response is the storage of a large number of supplies, which gives a sense of security (Arafat, Kar, Marthoenis, Sharma, et  al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020; Sim et al., 2020; Yuen et al., 2020). Thus, PB occurs when there is a perceived threat and PB can be regarded as a self-protection system to fulfil the need of individuals. People may consider buying adequate amount of necessary goods, medicine, and safety products for the family members, which intensifies the PB.

2.3  The Fear of the Unknown Caused Uncertainty The fear of the unknown with indecision is associated with emotional distress like fear and anxiety. Fear encourages individuals to buy more goods, which provides a sense of security and lessens stress (Kennett-Hensel, Sneath, & Lacey, 2012; Sneath, Lacey, & Kennett-Hensel, 2009). Mood congruency explains the correlation between fear and increased panic buying. It is suggested that under stress, individual perception and judgment of state are adversely distorted.

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2.4  Copying Behaviour The enduring personality trait and coping style shape the PB, as different individuals appraise the same stimuli differently based on their knowledge, personality, and past experiences (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020; Dammeyer, 2020). An individual with a copying behaviour who considers buying to release anxiety has a higher chance to indulge in PB to compensate over the anxiety of adverse stimuli or disaster. Thus PB is a compensated process for the loss of control over situations (Kennett-Hensel et al., 2012).

2.5  Social Influence Social influence is the individual alteration in behaviour to meet the challenges of the social environment. There are varied forms of social influence that influence panic buying. Self-prophecy is a type of self-influence in which misinformation and rumors influence the individual (Frank & Schvaneveldt, 2016). Normative influence refers to the acceptance of behaviour accepted by the community or peers, and it can also lead to panic buying (Yangui & Hajtaïeb El Aoud, 2015). The third type of social influence affects observational learning, which in turn is linked to information cascade in behavioural economics and network theory and describes where individuals take up herd behaviour. This phenomenon along with lack of proper information leads to panic buying (Sheu & Kuo, 2020).

2.6  Social Trust Social trust is another important factor that is responsible for panic buying, and individuals with a high social trust will avoid hoarding behaviour. The individuals with a high level of social distrust cause the public to act separately and increasing the fear leading to panic buying (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et  al., 2020; Hossain, Ferdous, & Siddiqee, 2020). Social learning theory suggests that in times of disaster, the public adopts signals by initiating reactions of others (Drury, 2018; Han, Hu, & Nigg, 2011). When people see that other neighbours are buying and stockpiling necessary goods with a perceived scarcity, they also indulge in extra amount influenced by others to feel safe and secure. Nevertheless, if an individual has an enduring experience that his living society is resilient enough to cope the crises (s)he may not involve in panic buying.

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2.7  Rumours and Misinformation Panic buying is generated by social interpretation of information and rumours by social actors. Rumours and misconceptions regarding the pandemics contribute to panic buying. When people are more anxious, they spread this information quickly thinking that they are helping others by spreading this information. Media controlled with misinformation about COVID-19 underpins the panic buying (Brindha, Jayaseelan, & Kadeswara, 2020). When the same lie gets repeated on many social media platforms/discussions and news channels, it creates the wrong memory (neural connections in the brain). Breaking these faulty memory circuits is not an easy task. This wrong and half information create much more panic and multiply infodemics (Reynolds et al., 2008).

2.8  Media Media plays a pivotal role in dispersal and regulating panic buying (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). As discussed above, media can spread broadcast as well as misinformation regarding the scarcity of food and can increase panic buying by increasing fear and anxiety among the general population (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). In a recent study on content analysis of online news portals regarding media reporting of PB revealed that about half (49.3%) of the media reports mentioned the controlling initiatives of the government, 36.4% explained the opinion of relevant experts regarding it, 20.6% justified the psychological explanations, 21.5% mentioned the rumor and its role, and 18.5% discussed controlling initiatives. As regards to negative characteristics, 96.6% mentioned the word panic buying in the title, 75.4% indicated the cause, and 62.3% added the photos of empty shelves. The reports from low–middle-income countries revealed more positive characteristics than the high-­ income countries (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Marthoenis, et  al., 2020). Additionally, media shapes the behaviour by the principle of social learning resulting in influencing the PB indirectly (Zheng, Shou, & Yang, 2020). Constructive media reporting on PB focusing on expert opinion, preventive measures by authorities, primary measure, and removing rumours could change panic behaviour. While media presentation in negatives views can increase the panic behaviour. Hou et al., 2020 observed that spreading rumours can increase panic behaviour by creating negative emotions (Hou, Du, Jiang, Zhou, & Lin, 2020). Ahmad and Murad (2020) stated that there is increased anxiety and panic behaviour due to more social media posts regarding panic behaviour. While media plays a significant role in the prevention of PB by avoiding fake information, varied behavioural strategies can be adopted for controlling PB (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). Adequate and reliable information on supply chain measures should be available to the masses during the crisis stage.

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2.9  Increased Demand There is increase of demand in health crisis along with altered perception of perceived threat during a health crisis. The response is the storage of a large number of supplies, which gives a sense of security (Arafat, Kar, Marthoenis, Sharma, et al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020; Sim et al., 2020; Yuen et  al., 2020). Thus, PB occurs when there is a perceived threat and PB can be regarded as a self-protection system to fulfil the need of individuals. Psychological reactance triggers the behaviour importantly (Sterman & Dogan, 2015).

2.10  Supply Chain and Anticipation of Price Hike PB is increased in frequency whenever shoppers assume goods to turn inaccessible or scarcity of goods due to disruption of supply chain as a result of adverse stimuli like COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown and flood (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-­ Mohamed, et al., 2020; Besson, 2020). It causes disruption of supply chains and poses challenges in areas like ordering, replenishment, and distribution of goods and hence aggravates the stock-out situations and increases the prices of goods (Yuen et al., 2020). It is more challenging and demanding for disaster management as it affects multiple domains of life including society, the economy, and local communities. It has a marked effect on retail operations immediately and in the long term (Hendricks et  al., 2020). It differs from store or brand promotion-induced stockpiling as it is based on the unwarranted, irrational build-up of goods for decreasing possible damages (Sharma et al., 2020).

2.11  Past Experience Panic buying is common during crisis and spans multiple domains of life as well as academic areas (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). Panic buying is supposed to be shaped by social structure, cultural values, personality construct, adverse stimuli, and previous experiences (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). Panic buying is increased during perceived or imminent disasters, as learnt from experiences of the past.

3  Behavioural Consequences of Panic Buying Panic behaviour is a sort of herd behaviour and is of special interest in consumer behaviour theory, a branch of economic theory that explains behaviours like buying spree and hoarding (Chen et al., 2020). Panic buying leads to a frank shortage of

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goods whether it is real or perceived. However, the exact behavioural consequence of panic buying has not been systemically studied. The psychological consequence of PB is varied and can range from fear and anxiety, anger, to despair. The uncertainty about the future and increasing fear of shortage lead to increased anger and anxiety among the people leading to PB (Kuruppu & De Zoysa, 2020). The predicted factors could be explained based on the intricate interplay between a triggering the stimulation, personality construct, and environmental impacts. It is suggested that under stress, individual perception and judgments of state are adversely distorted. As an emerging topic, there is a handful of empirical studies assessing the psychological and behaviour consequences following panic buying. Further large-­ scale robust studies assessing the persons indulging the panic buying behaviour are needed to dig out the various aspects. Qualitative studies are also an important option to identify the psychological behaviour consequences.

4  Behavioural Strategies to Control Panic Buying Prevention strategies could be focused to modify the interlinks between the secondary and tertiary factors of panic buying model (Fig. 1). Some factors could be immediately addressed such as inappropriate media reporting, dissemination of rumor, and spreading fake news, while some factors may need longer time such as faith on the authority, past experiences, personality traits. Uncertainty and the nature of the precipitating events are varied and should be contextualized. Immediately controllable strategies should be prioritized to start, while enduring initiatives such as raising awareness regarding the event, supply chain, and initiatives of the government should continue gradually.

4.1  Rationing Supermarkets should put a bar for buying necessary goods, and authorities should address the necessary goods for people with special needs. There should be reassurance from authorities for reducing fear related to the scarcity of goods. There should have been searches for the identification of local substitute goods in case of imported goods (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020).

4.2  Reappraisal A secondary reappraisal could be fundamentally helpful to challenge the maladaptive thoughts and subsequent behaviours expressed by PB. Is there really any shortage? What is the benefit of buying extra amount? However, such self-challenging

Behavioural Perspectives of Panic Buying

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thoughts during any emergency, epidemic, or pandemic may not be a norm. As perception itself is more influential than the scarcity, behavioural perspectives have an important role in PB. In most of the situations there may not be a real scarcity or even the stocks are not exhausted, but a perception of scarcity raises insecurity and anxiety that ultimately lead to the behaviour to reduce the anxiety and to feel safe.

4.3  Group Approach During emergency situations, individual approach could be challenging. Therefore group approach targeting the behaviour could be considered. Psychological approaches like group talk on a shortage of essential items can modify the panic buying  episodes. The anxiety-provoking thoughts can be reduced by avoiding debate on the dearth of essential items. Various measures may reduce anxiety and improve self-regulation. Social agreements and behavioural actions may have roles and repeated assurance is needed (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). The illustrative model explains cognitive distortions and maladjusted behaviour in PB and focuses on the adjustments of these maladaptive behaviours (Fig. 2).

4.4  Promotion of Altruism Elevation of the sense of empathy might assist to lessen the panic as they get a feeling of togetherness. Reassuring kindness could have resemblances with empathy

Situation

Panic buying

COVID-19 Pandemic

Thought

Behaviour

Maladaptive behaviour • Excessive buying • Hoarding behaviour

Erroneous cognitions • Catastrophizing • Scarcity effect • Social bias • Uncertainty

Emotion

Physical sensation

Fig. 2  Online group cognitive model for panic buying (Adapted from Kar et  al., 2020, p  608; copyright permitted: 4942200586394)

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feeling that improves the significance of neighbours and minimize PB behaviour (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020).

4.5  Media Media plays a significant role in the prevention of PB by avoiding fake information, varied behavioural strategies can be adopted for controlling PB (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). The authorities pay sharp concern to media and media factors responsible for PB should be strictly monitored. Adequate and reliable information on supply chain measures should be available to the masses during the crisis stage. Proper information on news reports and reduced fear regarding the scarcity of good should be done. Documentation and reporting of the false broadcast to appropriate authorities may also help in preventing PB.

5  Conclusion Panic buying is an under researched area while common during emergencies. There is a plethora of behavioural factors accountable for panic buying. Among the common ones, psychological factors like behaviours to ensure safety, to reduce uncertainty and anxiety, to take control over adverse environmental stimuli, herd mentality, and absence of trust are important. The other factors are perception of shortage, increase in demand, necessity of goods, anticipation of price increase, and rumor. The predicted factors could be explained based on the intricate interplay between triggering the stimulation, personality construct, and environmental impacts. Enthusiasm for the prevention of impending events should have a special emphasis while disseminating  the information. Proper media scrutiny along with control measures will help control PB. Psychological interventions such as online group discussion/therapy may be helpful to promote resiliency, security, and adaptive coping; however, they need contextualization and should be evidence based. Further, research studies are needed on panic buying behaviour to get a better understanding of the psychopathology and neurobiology of PB.

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Predictors of Panic Buying Jai Singh, Pankaj Kumar, and Sujita Kumar Kar

1  Introduction The deleterious effects of a disaster are numerous, but it has been observed that the panic buying behavior in potentially affected people was there in almost every disaster. People usually start gathering and making long queues outside the grocery shop as early as they hear the news of potentially disastrous situations in the near future. Panic buying is a behavior of sudden increase in buying of one or more essential goods in excess, despite the need, breaking the supply and demand chain (Arafat et al., 2020). Panic buying behavior is usually observed before or during the early stage of disastrous situations or adversities, and the amount of purchase largely depends upon the perceived situation (Yuen, Wang, Ma, & Li, 2020). The trigger is mostly an unanticipated natural disaster, sense of perceived scarcity of items, sense of losing control over uncertainties, terrorist activity zone, as well as the threat of massive strikes or war (Fang & Shou, 2015; Kumar, Basu, & Avittathur, 2018). In general, panic buying is a socially undesirable, herd behavior that is usually seen in mass. It is a bigger issue than it looks, as the stockpiling of commodities can cause supply–demand disruption, item shortages, and price hikes of concerned items. If it is on a large scale, it affects developing nations more than developed nations. It affects more on lower-income, physically challenged, extreme of ages and rural population in small-scale scenarios, where reach is the problem/concern. It may create panic, insecurity, anxiety, and a sense of fear among the vulnerable (Arafat et al., 2020). Panic buying is not a simple phenomenon to understand; it depends upon several factors, including the behavioral phenomenon, marketing, supply

J. Singh · P. Kumar () Department of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, Bihar, India S. K. Kar Department of Psychiatry, King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Y. Arafat et al. (eds.), Panic Buying, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70726-2_2

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chain management, economy, sociology, geology, public health, political administration, disaster and emergency management, and the role of media. (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Marthoenis, et  al., 2020). The stockpiling phenomenon is usually seen when prices of things decrease due to discounted/promotional sales or when the consumer benefits from high competition and businesses are bound to give some promotional packages to increase their sales. During a disaster-like situation, the consumer goes into panic buying and stockpiles against price hikes; people buy substandard products without reviewing them. Recently, the term panic buying, also called consumer hoarding, is coming to light in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The demand for hand sanitizers has increased by 255% in the UK after the declaration by WHO that hand sanitizer is the best preventive measure available against COVID-19 (Barr, 2020). Reuters, 2020 reported that grocery sales have increased by 43% after the announcement of COVID-19 in the UK (Reuters, 2020). According to Collinson, sales of groceries increased by 51.5% (Collinson, 2020). It has also been reported that most of the supermarket websites crashed after the announcement of lockdown, and the supermarkets were busy and had empty shelves due to consumer panic buying (Cogley, 2020; Mao, 2020). The world has seen the panic-buying phenomenon since the evolution of homo sapiens, and an abundance of examples have established this phenomenon. Although it was rarely recorded before the twentieth century due to various reasons, including lack of communication means. This kind of excessive purchasing and hoarding of essentials has since been observed during many crises, especially in communities living in comfortable circumstances, where usually there is an expectation of unfaltering access to essential commodities. The world has observed this phenomenon, for example, during both World Wars, the 1979 oil crisis, and natural disasters such as earthquakes and other pandemics (Bentall et al., 2020; Hori & Iwamoto, 2014; Sim, Chua, Vieta, & Fernandez, 2020). When the Spanish flu pandemic arrived in Europe (Arafat, Kar, & Shoib, 2020) after the First World War, people rushed toward the medical stores and purchased quinine and other medication, causing an extreme shortage of medical supplies in that era, and during the 2003 SARS pandemic, panic buying of groceries, masks, and medicines in China and Hong Kong led to the shortage of the same (Ding, 2014; Honigsbaum, 2013). Later, when Hurricane Katrina hit most of the oil drilling facilities in 2005, consumer hoarding behavior and long queues were observed outside most gasoline stations in the gulf coast region of the United States (Li, Chen, Yang, & Cong, 2020). When after a long-lasting drought in 2008, rice production in Australia was reduced by 98%, which generated the fear of insufficient rice supplies around the globe. Later, Japan’s nuclear crisis worried the consumers to panic buy mineral water and salt in Japan, Beijing, Shanghai, San Francisco, and other cities (Kurihara, Maruyama, & Luloff, 2012). This time it was witnessed globally following the COVID-19 pandemic. Consumer panic buying often leads to long waiting-lines, large-scale stock-out, and a great amount of anxiety, which has a significant negative impact on the market. Recently the COVID-19 pandemic has made us wonder as to whether consumers can be better educated to avoid such behaviors in times of inevitable future shocks and crises (Sharma et al., 2020). Hence, it is important to fully understand

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how we can predict consumer panic buying behavior and how to mitigate it. Although the prediction of this behavior prior to the event is difficult as it is a multifactorial phenomenon. Predicting this behavior with consideration of different perspectives is important for correctly predicting it. The panic buying, on the one hand, is considered an undesirable collective behavior at the level of negative effect on the population, in terms of economic and financial consequences. On the other hand, it is seen as an adaptive response of the individual based on the principle of survival psychology theory at the individual level. A multitude of factors or predictors operate at external and internal levels, which interact with one another in a very complex manner and ultimately result in panic buying behavior by individual or group (Fig. 1). In another way, the risk factors known to be associated with panic buying may be seen as predictive factors. The strength and direction of the predictive value of different risk factors are yet to be established, though, during the current COVID-19 pandemic, experts from the

Fig. 1  Graphical representation of various factors predicting panic buying behavior

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field of economics, consumer behavior, and human behavior have been working to propose and test the prediction models of panic buying (Arafat et al., 2020; Bentall et  al., 2020; Jaspal, Lopes, & Lopes, 2020; Zhang & Zhou, 2020). Here, we are proposing a classification of external and internal predictors based on whether it works on a group level or individual level.

2  Predictors of Panic Buying Based on the current understanding, there is no defined or established predictive factors for panic buying. Though, the causative factors have been identified and discussed by researchers in the recent time in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et  al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Kaliamoorthy, et  al., 2020; Arafat et  al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Marthoenis, et al., 2020, did the analysis of various media reports on panic buying and proposed the causative factors as primary, secondary, and tertiary factors based on precipitating factor as an event, mediating factors as a psychological construct, information system, and sociopolitical influence, and facilitating factors like the sense of scarcity, the anticipation of price hike, and high product demand (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020). The psychological underpinning has been predominantly identified as the perception of scarcity, perceived sense of losing control, perceived insecurity, and social learning theory (Arafat, Kar, Marthoenis, Sharma, et al., 2020). The above causative factors have provided a good understanding of the panic buying pathway. The predictive power of causative factors has not been evaluated as yet. The complex interaction of the causative factors compounds the difficulty of formulating a promising predicting panic buying model. Herewith, the proposal to classify the various factors into internal and external predicting factors is presented to simplify the understanding phenomenology of this behavior.

3  External Predictors of Panic Buying 3.1  Onset of Disaster Human behavior during a disaster largely depends on how they perceive the threat. Disasters can be natural and can be human-made. If the disaster is expected to come and is fully or partly in control, the impact and behaviors of the affected will be different from the unexpected, uncontrolled disasters in which a sense of losing control over the environment will be present. Disasters can be sudden in onset like earthquakes, hurricanes, or volcanos, which do not give enough time for the preparedness to combat, hence protective measures like panic buying are usually not observed in such circumstances. Human-made disasters like global warming and industrial

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and warfare disasters give appropriate time to think and combat the situation. Recently the COVID-19 pandemic started in Wuhan City of China in November 2019. WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11th March 2020 (Downing, 2020; Sarda, Tekale, Kótai, Domb, & Pawar, 2020). It has given appropriate time to think and to prepare for taking preventive measures. Various governments have announced lockdown and social distancing protocols as protective measures in a short period, which provided people a limited amount of time for preparing themselves, resulting in panic buying behavior.

3.2  Uncertainties of Duration Some forms of disaster come with different grades of severity and suffering, while other forms of disaster come with time uncertainty, such as how long it is going to last (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020). In the situation described later, people remain uncertain about the duration of survival until the end of the disaster. In this type of situation, much bizarre behavior, including panic buying, becomes more evident (Sim et al., 2020). During any crisis, people form a risk perception of the situation (Wen, Sun, Li, He, & Tsai, 2019). The individual determines the degree of risk by assessing the threat of an outbreak. To decide about the degree of risk, people perform risk analysis by analyzing various parameters, including the nature, category, severity, duration of the disaster, and the available facilities to combat the same. Uncertainty of the duration of a disaster is an important predictor for humankind’s judgment process for making combat strategies for survival. People generally calculate how many belongings they need to survive for the optimum duration and make their decisions based on those assumptions. If the people struggle to guess the optimum duration of a disaster, as in the case of COVID-19, they start feeling the loss of control over the environment and develop anxiety that can lead to panic buying decisions (Kemp, Kennett-Hensel, & Williams, 2014). It has been observed that people showed a stockpiling phenomenon when the crisis period was not fixed. Multiple examples showed that panic buying almost always resulted after an event in which people were confused about the duration of suffering.

3.3  Disrupted Social Support System Joshi & Aoki, 2014 highlighted the concept of social trust, which facilitates mutual coordination and cooperation for disaster recovery programs (Joshi & Aoki, 2014). There are two major aspects of social trust in times of crisis, i.e., trust in community and government. Trust in the community reflects the collective nature of an individual, which is associated with such characteristics as generosity, dependability, helpfulness, and attentiveness to others’ needs. In contrast, individualistic nature is associated with characteristics such as independence or assertiveness. Media

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portrayal of people engaging in panic buying probably causes distrust and can trigger it later (Kang, He, & Shin, 2020). In challenging times, increased stress can impair the ability to cope and adjust to difficult situations due to a lack of psychological or physical resources, which can impair mental and physical health (Carr & Umberson, 2013; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Previous researches have consistently shown that the strength of social connections and perceived availability of social support services as psychological resources to deal with the harmful emotional and behavioral consequences of negative situations (Cohen, Mermelstein, Kamarck, & Hoberman, 1985; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Based on research on the stress-­ relieving role of social support and interactions, one effective strategy to deal with social distancing’s negative psychological consequences would be to engage in active social communication to strengthen social bonds (Uchino, 2009; Umberson & Montez, 2010). However, in the event of a pandemic, there may be an open question about the consequences of promoting social interaction. Although interpersonal communication and social support from others have been reported to reduce negative psychological reactions to health crises (Özmete & Pak, 2020; Wang, Cai, Qian, & Peng, 2014), sudden quarantine rules and unknown global challenges with much uncertainty drive the expected function of social interaction to negative social interaction. In fact, negative social interactions due to situational restrictions such as failing to provide emotional or instrumental attention, invading one’s privacy, or deprivation of confidence or hope have been largely overlooked in major social support and health research (Lincoln, 2000). Another relevant social construct is confidence in rapidly changing situations with extreme uncertainty and risk. Belief in society plays an important role in confronting unknown status and novel social risks, as the psychological basis of social relationships is to strengthen group membership and shared values (Keller, Siegrist, Earle, & Gutscher, 2011; Siegrist & Cvetkovich, 2000). Built on trust, people develop a certain level of trust that a given situation will improve. Collective trust is an important social capital to overcome people’s feelings of uncertainty and reduce the negative consequences of risk perception, especially in the absence of knowledge (Earle & Cvetkovich, 1995). In a scenario of lack of information and a high level of uncertainty, people usually depend on trust to reduce the complexity of an unknown crisis. When the general confidence level decreases, a predictable behavior in crises results in panic buying. Due to the lack of psychological buffers to deal with social threats, they may engage in behaviors that could promote self-­ preservation (Clarke, 2002). Despite the prevalence of altruism and prosecution behavior prevailing in the crisis (Drury, 2018), panic buying at supermarkets and drugstores has been a widespread response to the outbreak of COVID-19. There is also a possibility of this behavior resulting in an exchange of ideas about how dramatic the situation is as a consequence of the threatened general trust. Therefore, having a strong social network, particularly in times of self-isolation, appears to be favorable for better behavioral outcomes in a psychological context. It is important to continue combating social isolation, particularly in the most vulnerable groups of society, such as older people, people of low socioeconomic status, and mental health issues (Dickens, Richards, Greaves, & Campbell, 2011). During COVID-19,

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socially isolated individuals tend to perform poorly and may be at high risk of adversity. In short, a high level of social trust indicates that individuals would be more cooperative and refrain from accumulating and would rather share their limited supplies with others. Conversely, a high level of social distrust may motivate the public to act personally, fearing others to buy more than their share and leaving nothing to others. This triggers panic buying and hoarding.

3.4  Lack of Trust in Government/Authority Regarding trust in the government, the government plays an important role in providing relief and recovery to the public during an outbreak of disease, maintaining order, and disseminating information. Public confidence in government is important because it will ensure compliance and a coordinated effort to control disease spread. COVID-19 came with some measures such as lockdown and time-bound intervention policies. The lockdown policy was initially implemented to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic so that there would be ample time to devise safety measures, strengthen health services, develop vaccines, and modernize combat facility agents. However, this policy has several shortcomings, which increase customer nervousness, inadvertently leading to the financial burden, economic slowdown, and social consequences (Bin et  al., 2020; Ozili & Arun, 2020). A timed intervention policy is usually implemented in a phased manner according to the situation. The first phase of lockdown usually covers the epicenter of the location of the outbreak. The second phase involves the closure of large gathering spaces such as schools, universities, and malls. The third phase involves home quarantine with limited mobility and access to essential activities. The final phase of activities includes a large-scale lockdown with a complete ban. The measures of social distancing are also according to the phase of lockdown. Time-bound intervention policy is considered a demand-management policy, and its main objective is to minimize the negative effects caused by the pandemic (Bin et al., 2020). Failure of this system or poor implementation of this system can cause panic in public (Prentice, Chen, & Stantic, 2020). Implementing this policy too early or too late can have serious negative consequences. Timing is very important in this system’s implementation strategy, and faulty implementation leads to undesirable consequences, and panic buying is one of them. A study was conducted by Catherine Prentice et  al., 2020, in Australia using Twitter posts by using specific keywords and focused on the relationship between government interventions associated with COVID-19 and consumer behavior response. This study proposed that an increase in lockdown/social distancing measures impacted negatively and promoted government failure, job losses, fine, and finally led to panic buying (Prentice et al., 2020). In the past, Kurihara et al., 2012 attempted to investigate and analyze the causes and factors of consumer behavior from a survey conducted after the Japan Earthquake and found that the

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government’s exaggeration of disaster and excessive media coverage led to an excess of necessary purchase of goods (Kurihara et  al., 2012). A previous study showed that political confidence during the SARS epidemic was negatively associated with anxiety because it conferred psychological stability amidst situational instability (Cheung & Tse, 2008). However, in the absence of political trust, fear of COVID-19 may increase, and individuals may seek alternatives, possibly a less effective coping strategy. It has been observed that during the crisis of disasters, people sometimes believe that the government will not be able to control black marketing and provide assistance to the countrymen. Lack of trust and anticipation of the exhaustion of resources may be responsible for panic buying. People underestimate the chances of help and simultaneously ignore the danger (Bonneux & Van Damme, 2006).

3.5  Fault in Supply Chain System Panic buying is a human behavior characterized by an increase in the required amount of purchases before or after a disaster or in view of a large price increase or decrease. Panic buying reduces supply and creates high demand, leading to high price inflation. This increase in demand leads to a shortage of products. Such a situation increases the number of vulnerable people in need of the product in a post-­ disaster scenario, especially if the product is a basic necessity, like food or water. The Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami are examples that led to the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant’s failure, intensifying the already heightened crisis manifold. A huge consequence was the shortages of food, water, medicine, and fuel for survivors and also people in the neighboring areas. Panic buying was prevalent in all sectors, from the food and beverage industry to the auto component market (Kurihara et al., 2012; Yoon, Narasimhan, & Kim, 2018). If there is panic buying in large proportions, it has the potential to disrupt the supply chain, thereby increasing demand. This disruption leads to the repetition of the panic buying phenomenon forming a vicious circle. Some of the consequences of panic buying behavior are disruption of supply and demand and scarcity of goods in the market. Retailers’ decisions can also disrupt buying patterns such as price increases, limiting sales (quota), limiting supplies, and stockpiling. It is important to note that human behavior observed during a crisis is often favorable as the hoarding of life’s needs in anticipation of supply shortages is a rational survival strategy. Over-purchasing, which requires buying more to maintain a house during regular life, becomes problematic when it creates demand-side shortages, stimulating further purchases, and potentially creates a vicious cycle of demand and supply. In some circumstances, this may happen in the absence of an actual supply-side shortage; in that case, the term ‘panic buying’ seems appropriate.

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3.6  Role of Media/Social Media In the age of information, various forms of media play an important role in creating, remodeling, and forming public opinion. This relationship becomes even more pronounced during a crisis, where the media has the ability to notify via headlines, information, or remove hysteria (Ghassabi & Zare-Farashbandi, 2015). Sometimes people are threatened by media reports and purchase more than before, which is likely to cause a global crisis. Occasionally, the media reports the crisis in a sensational manner that causes more panic. Another important factor is how the virus or any pandemic is portrayed in films. People learn from them and try to imitate them when they encounter a pandemic (Schell, 1997). Kilgo, Yoo, and Johnson (2018) studied the Ebola health crisis and observed that during the intensified initial panic purchase, the media emphasized news aspects that attracted more public attention, primarily through the provocation of fear (Kilgo et al., 2018). 3.6.1  Television/Print Media As far as COVID-19 is concerned, it has been seen in many media reports, including print media, that it created a sense of panic among individuals by displaying empty shelves of supermarkets, individual views, and spreading news many a times lacking credibility. Recently in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Kaliamoorthy, et al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Marthoenis, Sharma, et al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Marthoenis, et al., 2020 did the content analysis of worldwide media coverage on the issue of panic buying. According to the study, nearly half of the media reports explicitly mentioned the scarce items (46% highlighted the scares items), and nearly 80% reported the cause and impact of panic buying, compared to 27.1% of media reports which covered corrective and remedial measures (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Kaliamoorthy, et  al., 2020). This faulty/harmful reporting might worsen the situation. Hou, Du, Jiang, Zhou, & Lin, 2020 reported in China that due to misinformation and rumors in news media caused negative emotions among the public, and it triggered panic buying behavior (Hou et al., 2020). A study from Ahmad & Murad, 2020 in Iraq also reported that social media flooding of misinformation created anxiety and panic among the population (Ahmad & Murad, 2020). 3.6.2  Social Media Social media is also allowing sensationalism and misinformation to spread misinformation and rumors (Cogley, 2020). Social media makes a man more conscious and anxious about what is to come, which has an impact on stock supplies. Researchers and experts have noted and shared that business activities, consumer buying patterns, and behavior have changed due to COVID-19. Social media

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platforms have multiple ways of communications (Audio, Video, Chat, Picture, Gif, Tag, Sharing, Tweet/Retweet, etc.), which spread the information/misinformation in minutes across the globe. People have also started spending more time on social media during COVID-19 lockdown and homestay. The physical distancing/social distancing further promotes social media as a way of communication and connection. Consumer panic buying behavior by social influence may develop through rumors, sensationalism, and other misinformation forms. 3.6.3  Social Proof Theory Social media has played an important role in changing social cognition regarding scarcity and supply chain disbalance. Many of the people just jumped because others are doing the same. According to a media report, people rushed to buy the exact same items that were rumored/misinformed or displayed empty shelves out of stock on various social media platforms (Cogley, 2020). Cogley, 2020 related this behavior to social influence and highlighted the rush among the people to stockpile basic household goods. The social media platform is also used by scientists and other public health experts to directly engage with the public or to discuss research, while thousands of users use it to spread sensationalism, rumors, and other forms of disinformation (De La Garza, 2020). Social media promotes socialization, interactive communication, reviews, recommendations, information and knowledge, which may help certain people to make decisions for purchases, and it has a strong impact on buying decisions. It is seen that after many viral videos about social distancing measures, long queues in front of shops while purchasing necessities as well as staying at home for an uncertain period promoted people to buy extra groceries, hand sanitizers, tissue paper, masks & gloves. For example, if someone shares a video of tissue paper crisis and shortage of other items at a particular place, it influences the demand for those products in the other areas due to social media connectivity. Media is the most favorable medium for mass communication; thus can be dangerous by spreading misinformation and rumors. The solution to this may be authority/government action, expert opinion, underlying psychology, nullifying the rumors, suggesting the remedial measures, and mentioning the impact of panic buying (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Marthoenis, et al., 2020).

3.7  Demographic and Situational Characteristics There is ample research available to understand consumers’ decision to buy before going for the purchase. It is always a multifactorial decision based on a variety of factors (Al-Salamin & Al-Hassan, 2016) (Fig. 2). Demographic and situational factors may provide vulnerability to future shortages, and these factors may be considered to contribute to the overall payoff of scarcity signals. In the first variable of this

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Fig. 2  Factors influencing consumer buying decision

type, exposure to coronavirus or exposure to something else, or preexisting health conditions that provide vulnerability to oneself or someone close, or indeed any factor that increases the risk of infection may indicate that future access to stores is reduced, and is therefore at a risk of scarcity. Remote locations and locations that are difficult to access during crisis forces the community to purchase and stockpile more. A similar effect of household size can also be expected as panic buying will be higher if the number of people in the house are more to feed. Consistent with this account, household size may predict greater purchases. Given that parents’ economic tightness and food insecurity are a major source of psychological distress, one study predicted that homes with children would show a greater propensity to purchase more (Hori & Iwamoto, 2014). There is another aspect, in times of uncertainty, food security may depend on alliances with neighbors. A sense of belonging to a neighborhood is protective against the stress associated with financial hardship as trusting relationships with neighbors might alleviate the over-purchasing due to

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anticipated support in the event of a poor supply. Conversely, paranoia with harsh neighborhoods, in which confidence is low, may be associated with a greater tendency to over-purchase (McElroy et al., 2019).

4  Internal Predictors of Panic Buying 4.1  Perceived Personal Risk/Perceived Insecurity It considers the behavioral approach. It can vary from impulsive to planned behavior. There are three elements involved in panic buying. First, it is caused by a person’s signs of distress, disability, and anxiety over a dangerous situation, and the possibility of inadequate solutions. The combination of these three increases one’s nervousness. Second, an attempt to retreat from threatening situations is the result of one’s nervousness. Third, behavioral changes occur due to individual decision making to avoid panic. Individual actions and behaviors that emerge from perception are caused by two things: first, personal behavioral dispositions, internal characteristics such as personality, beliefs, and attitudes. Second, situational disposition, in which behavior is driven by conditions that occur outside of the individual’s will and is influenced by external aspects of the environment (Holt et al., 2012). In survival psychology, it is widely accepted that individuals may undergo behavioral changes after major events such as natural disasters and disease outbreaks that potentially disrupt social life resulting in panic buying (Yuen, Wang, et al., 2020). 4.1.1  Sense of Perceived Scarcity Panic behavior has been observed during public health emergencies since ancient times. Perceived scattering is strongly associated with response theory that assumes that individuals experience psychological reactions whenever they feel threatened or restricted (Gupta & Gentry, 2016; Wilkens, 2020). In this scenario, if a product could soon become inaccessible due to a crisis, there is a possibility of threatened or restricted personal freedom. As a result, such signals provoke a psychological response that draws attention to a product. The psychological response can be triggered by a feeling of urge to buy and hoarding behavior, reflecting panic buying response (Arafat, Kar, Menon, Marthoenis, et al., 2020; Wilkens, 2020). 4.1.2  Sense of Losing Control over Uncertainties Perceived feelings of losing control of the environment may be one of the responsible factors for panic buying behavior. During a disaster, people usually like to control things, and this brings them some certainty (Wilkens, 2020). People do not

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want to get into any kind of debate, and moral insecurity drives them to reduce anxiety and bring back a sense of control. The phenomenon can be explained as a corrective response to reduce the fear and anxiety of losing control of the surrounding environment. Panic buying has also been associated with a perceived sense of insecurity and instability in crisis situations (Arafat, Kar, Marthoenis, Sharma, et al., 2020; Arafat, Kar, Menon, Alradie-Mohamed, et al., 2020; Gazali, 2020; Hendrix & Brinkman, 2013). In the pandemic situation of COVID-19, the community is uncertain of when the disaster will end; thus, buying the basic necessities as much as possible has become a measure to deal with the feeling of insecurity. 4.1.3  Perceived Threat During a health crisis, people make risk perceptions about the situation. The degree of perceived risk by an individual is determined by assessing the risk of an outbreak, which can be measured by both sensitivity and severity of the event. Accordingly, sensitivity and severity refer to the probability and outcome of contracting a disease. Both sensitivity and severity are subdimensions of the health belief model, suggesting that people are motivated to perform self-protection behaviors to reduce risk (Yuen, Li, Ma, & Wang, 2020). The hoarding behavior before or during a disaster, which can be seen as self-protection behavior, is considered a self-interested, planned behavior to reduce risk (Sheu & Kuo, 2020). In particular, risk can be reduced by storing large quantities of supplies that can provide individuals with a sense of security and well-being. For example, with hoarding, people can reduce their shop visits, which reduces their contact with people and their likelihood of contracting the disease. In addition, stocks can serve as a safety buffer with the information that hoarders will have adequate supplies of masks and hand sanitizers to protect them and may go through a health crisis. 4.1.4  Fear of the Unknown In general, people experience emotional distress such as fear and anxiety during an outbreak of the disease. This crisis is mainly caused by humans’ inability to predict the consequences of the outbreak, which challenges the human dominance of nature (Gazali, 2020; Sterman & Dogan, 2015; Yuen, Wang, et  al., 2020). Fear of the unknown is affected by a health crisis or lack of knowledge about the disease. This creates uncertainty, causing people to understand and visualize many scenarios and therefore instill fear. Very often, fear is noted to modify shopping behavior rather than an outbreak event. Previous statistics suggest that fear of the unknown during the disaster has forced people to spend more in the retail outlets. Fear drives individuals to shop as it will give them a sense of safety, comfort, escape from the moment, and reduce stress (Loxton et  al., 2020; Yuen, Wang, et  al., 2020). Such motivation is often driven not by the actual need for the products purchased but by controlling their negative feelings for individuals. The association between fear and

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increased purchasing behavior can also be interpreted with mood congruency. It proposes that under negative emotions or stress, the person’s perception and the decision of tangential situations or events become negatively skewed (Larson & Shin, 2018). Heightened fear increases people’s perceived risk and risk of the condition, prompting them to take drastic measures to respond to an outbreak of the disease. As a result, it can trigger panic buying, which is seen as a form of self-protection behavior to reduce its risk.

4.2  Social Learning Theory Some consumers are influenced by social media/print media/TV media; others imitate physically/verbally. Kelman, 1958, proposed “Social Influence Theory,” which is understood as a notion that subsequent behavior and individuals’ actions are influenced by others (Kelman, 1958). Social media influences and inspires others in a global society by the use of “social evidence” due to a large number of similar views. This theory also indicated that social proof is a mechanism that works best when large numbers of people provide evidence through their collective action and behavior (Naeem, 2020). Social media channels incorporate the world into one global society. Expert opinions and scientific suggestions work as an influence of social behavior and an individual’s behavior, as people in the surrounding are particularly considered to have more knowledge. In the case of COVID-19, scientists, politicians, and health experts were using social media to explain what an unprecedented type of threat it is, but the social interpretation of this information turned into panic buying behavior, which also explains how the global society is thinking and the response to the COVID-19 crisis. Individuals are members of society; therefore, their decisions may be influenced by the attitudes, opinions, and beliefs of the larger group. Social influence can be defined as the way by which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of the social environment. There are many types of social influences that may explain panic buying. In a state of panic, consumers’ purchase decisions are often influenced by choice of their peers. For example, when asked about the reason for stockpiling before a severe avalanche hit New York City in 2015, consumers said that after seeing the news on the various media platforms and long queues of hoarders in front of the supermarkets, they felt pressured to do the same as those stocking consumers because they thought perhaps those shoppers knew or foresaw something they did not. This demonstrates the impact of social education on consumers’ panic shopping decisions. Under which consumers update their perception about future supply shortage rates based on their peers’ observation of stocking options.

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4.3  Basic Survival Instinct/Survival Psychology People have an internal psychological conflict, caused by a desire for self-­ preservation built with knowledge and certainty that death is inevitable (Harmon-­ Jones et al., 1997). Facing this struggle, people adopt many methods for their safety and to find meaning, order, and stability in their world. In this sense, some studies have shown that buying or overestimating things is a way of relieving stress from the fear of survival (Arndt, Solomon, Kasser, & Sheldon, 2004; Fransen, Arendsen, & Das, 2019). 4.3.1  Herd Mentality As a social creature, sometimes we estimate the intensity of a crisis from the reactions of our peers around us that explains social learning theory to the event. The incident can also be attributed to similar things that occurred during other epidemics and natural disasters in the past. In an emergency or crisis moment, the primitive part of our brain usually becomes more prominent and engages us in behaviors that are necessary for survival (Dodgson, 2020). Furthermore, primitive instinct behaviors have poor humanitarian expression and rational thinking that can be an important aspect to explain the phenomenon. Survival psychology acknowledges that individuals can undergo behavioral changes due to the occurrence of an event, including natural disasters or health care crises (Bentall et al., 2020; Forbes, 2017). These behavioral changes may include negative development of herd mentality, changes in discretionary buying habits, and investment decision making. The herd mentality is defined as the alignment of thoughts and/or behaviors of individuals in a group, which emerges through local interactions between agents instead of objective coordination by a central authority or a leading figure (Kameda & Hastie, 2015; Loxton et al., 2020). During periods of stress or failures, such as during the period of COVID-19, herd mentality appears in many different key areas, including share prices, consumer buying behavior, and collective social anxiety. 4.3.2  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Model Examining changes in consumer behavior in response to natural disasters, understanding consumer decision-making processes is fundamental. Maslow’s theory can be used to classify purchases as “needs” versus “wants”(Maslow & Frager, 1987). The pyramid hierarchy demonstrates the classification of consumer behaviors, which is considered the most important for human survival. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Model proposed five classifications that begin at the base of the pyramid comprising physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-­ actualization or personal growth (Maslow & Frager, 1987). It provides a basic

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framework of human motivation to understand consumer behavior in a time of a disastrous situation. Whenever there are uncertainties and unprecedented stress or anxiety, the human psyche is motivated to go downwards in the hierarchy of the pyramid to get a sense of control in such a situation. That leads to a change in human behavior to indulge in buying goods which satisfies the survival and safety needs, e.g., food, shelter, health needs. Consistent with the hierarchy, consumers during a crisis tend to focus on meeting basic physical needs before moving to higher levels and toward more luxury discretionary behavior (Forbes, 2017). Maslow’s model provides a valuable platform to analyze consumer behavior during periods of stress or anxiety, which arise through emotions or more concrete stress as a global epidemic. Forbes, 2017 investigated the immediate and short-term consumption patterns during the natural disaster crisis in a subsequent study of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake (Forbes, 2017). Immediately after the event, that is, within the first week, consumer purchases moved toward products that met basic physical needs for survival (i.e., water, non-food items, childcare, heat, and light), products providing communication services (i.e., telephones), radio batteries), and cleaning and restoring normal life (e.g., paper towels, rubber gloves).

4.4  Coping Mechanism Control refers to the ability to influence outcomes in an environment. In general, humans have an innate desire to control, and this is a part of their survival. Problems such as fear of the unknown trigger coping behavior (Sim et  al., 2020). In this regard, panic buying can be seen as an outlet to gain control over the situation, compensating for the psychological harm experienced by individuals. According to compensatory control theory, when the disease outbreaks are not amenable to control, the individual will change to increase control over other domains (Yuen, Wang, et  al., 2020). Individuals can control the environment through problem-solving. Existing studies suggest that engaging in problem-solving strengthens people’s trust to gain control over the situation (Yang, Li, Peng, & Wang, 2020; Yuen, Wang, et al., 2020). Very often, a person engages in problem-solving for the transition from a lesser to more desirable situation. Essentially, there must be two requirements to meet a person to motivate for problem-solving. First, the action must be executed by the person. Second, the action must be considered to result in a more desirable situation (Yap & Chen, 2020). In this regard, purchasing consumer products, especially daily necessities, fulfills the first requirement because it is an activity that is carried out regularly by households and does not consume cognitive or monetary resources. In addition, it also fulfills the second requirement because it is practical to buy consumer products. However, purchasing large quantities of consumer goods is impractical, because it does not help or may make the supply shortage in the market worse. This confuses individuals with indirect control over the condition, knowing that most of these items can help deal with a health crisis or still be used in the future.

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5  Conclusion Panic buying is considered a herd behavior, which leads to significant undesirable consequences in the form of supply-chain disruption, stock-out, and increase in the price of the essential staple commodities. In a health disaster situation, the additional impact on the health supply chain, psychological health of individuals, especially the vulnerable population, is of significant magnitude. The multiple and diverse internal and external factors and their interplay can predict the group behavior for panic buying. Till now, there is a dearth of research on this topic, and it is difficult to formulate an accurate pathway for predicting panic buying. The various predicting factors have different powers for triggering this behavior. In a natural disaster situation, the external factors will have more predicting value, whereas, in a health disaster situation, internal factors will acquire equally significant predictive value. The various models for precise prediction of panic behavior need to be examined and evaluated through research to accurately anticipate it so that necessary measures can be initiated on time to mitigate the consequences of this behavior. However, the limitations for conducting a scientific evaluation of this construct require needful attention. Various factors are considered to limit the research in this area. The most important question is the feasibility of conducting research on unpredictable, irregular, and isolated events of panic behavior during disaster. The difficulty of measuring the variables or factors can influence panic buying, as it varies across different disaster situations and places of occurrence. Predicting and modifying group behavior during an emergency situation in itself remains a challenging task. The various factors discussed in the chapter give us better insight to take the necessary measures to mitigate the probability of future panic buying events. The important measures to prevent it must include timely intervention through government policy measures, adequate and appropriate messages from the government to prevent panic in individuals. The influence of print, electronic, and social media on individual and group behavior is most important in mitigating this behavior. The policy measures and steps to be taken by the government must focus on vulnerable populations intensively, and all efforts to build the trust of people toward government is the most crucial preventive step. The timing of the implementation of policy measures in tandem with the various phases of a disaster situation is a very important factor in mitigating this behavior during a disaster situation. Health disaster situations, in addition, require well-timed crisis management and healthcare delivery for minimizing the psychological impact on individuals to prevent this behavior. Panic buying is a ubiquitous phenomenon across the globe with negative short- and long-term consequences for society. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a good opportunity to better understand the risk and predictive factors related to this behavior. Use of artificial intelligence may help in predicting various aspects of panic buying. With the more scientific evaluation of various models of predictors being carried out, the better intervention measures to prevent it are likely to come in the future.

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Healthcare Perspectives of Panic Buying Aishwariya Brigit George and Amit Singh

1  Introduction At the time of the writing of this chapter (November 2020), the world’s population is in the midst of surviving one of the deadliest pandemics that history has witnessed, COVID-19. This period in history is unique for many reasons, some of the most important being the speed of dissemination of information that has accompanied the penetration of the internet into nearly every corner of the globe and the globalization of economies (World Internet Users Statistics and 2020 World Population Stats, 2020). COVID-19 has effectively brought the machinery of daily lives to a grinding halt and every phase of the pandemic has thrust up challenges for governments and economies worldwide to mitigate the devastation caused to human life, not only due to illness and mortality but also due to the loss of employment and supply disruption of essential goods and medicines (World Bank, 2020). One of the observed phenomena during such times of uncertainty is panic buying. This chapter aims to give an overview of the key aspects of this phenomenon in relation to medicinal products, substances of abuse, and healthcare services.

A. B. George Department of Psychiatry, Malabar Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Calicut, Kerala, India A. Singh () TI Division, National AIDS Control Organisation, New Delhi, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Y. Arafat et al. (eds.), Panic Buying, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70726-2_3

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2  The Phenomenon of Panic Buying The panic buying of healthcare products and medicines often occurs in the setting of anticipation of the effects of a disaster, supply shortages, and price hikes (Loxton et al., 2020; Yoon, Narasimhan, & Kim, 2018). Other factors influencing this phenomenon include resilience of the supply chain, access to quality information, media portrayal of the situation, and the public psyche. The natural disasters, being associated with abrupt changes in the supply and availability of commodities and shifts in the pattern of demand, lead to unanticipated shortages of certain resources, inspiring panic buying, hoarding, and triage responses (Day, 2014). What follows the shortage in any commodity, real or perceived, is a rise in its prices. Price hikes may have certain economic benefits, such as purchase of the commodity by the people who absolutely need it, the conservative use of commodities, and increased production and supply by sellers out of profit-based incentives. However, the price hike leads to a sudden increase in buying of the commodities with potential utility, before any further hike in prices (Arafat et al., 2020). It leads to panic buying of addictive substances too. Periodic price hikes in cigarettes as a result of rising taxation has seen panic buying among retailers and customers, as has been witnessed in Japan and Australia (Hall, 2010; Ryall, 2010). The extent of disaster preparedness, supply chain resilience and logistics have huge bearings on the panic buying behavior. The supply chain is governed by the level of planning, availability of raw materials, logistics and transport, sociopolitical and economic environment, and consumer behavior. Vulnerability is higher in the contemporary world, as supply chains have evolved to maximize efficiency and speed involving numerous stakeholders. Because of these dependencies, a disruption in operations in one part of the world can potentially impact the global supplies (Meixell & Gargeya, 2005). A scenario brought to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic is global lockdowns, varying in extent and duration, in countries such as the USA, the UK, South Africa, and India, during which the sale of alcohol and tobacco were among the facilities that were temporarily discontinued. Many countries saw a rise in sales by up to 28% either in anticipation, or when the lockdown relaxations were lifted, as people stockpiled cigarettes, other tobacco products, and alcohol (Nadkarni, Kapoor, & Pathare, 2020). The reopening of stand-alone outlets in May 2020 saw another bout of panic buying as people violated social-distancing and other precautions to stockpile beverages despite the police forcefully controlling crowds (Bajpai, 2020). Media plays a crucial role in influencing the direction of information flow and affects consumer behavior through the effect on perception of the seriousness of events (McCombs, 2018; Wei, Wen-wu, & Lin, 2011). In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a study examined the temporal relationship between the appearance of news articles that mentioned the word “stockpiling” and the phrase “out-of-stock” observed that the frequency of such articles peaked in the USA, the UK, and Australia, prior to the peak in consumer behavior (Loxton et al., 2020). Public addresses by prominent world leaders have also been seen to influence

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buying behaviors (Vaduganathan et  al., 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, based on preliminary reports, hydroxychloroquine was promoted by several leaders as a drug that was effective to reduce morbidity and mortality, which saw people stocking up on the same, despite caution being advised by healthcare authorities (ANI, 2020; Palmeira et al., 2020). The key psychological factors proposed to be behind the phenomenon of panic buying include perception of threat and scarcity, fear of the unknown, panic buying as a coping behavior, and a means to regain control and the influence of the social network of an individual (Arafat et  al., 2020; Yuen, Wang, Ma, & Li, 2020). Perceived threat relates to buying behavior in that, buying and stocking is a means of self-protection in response to threat (Sheu & Kuo, 2020). Scarcity and the link to panic buying is explained by reactance theory, where the individual reacts to protect any perceived restriction in freedom (Thomas & Mora, 2014). Another explanation is “anticipated regret”; regret due to their actual behavior choice resulting in some loss compared to the alternative behavior (Gupta & Gentry, 2019). Fear of the unknown results in panic buying as a means to allay that fear, not because the stockpiled products are actually needed (Kennett-Hensel, Sneath, & Lacey, 2012). An extension of this looks at the behavior as a coping mechanism that restores a sense of control over the circumstances (Ballantine et al., 2014). The role of social influence is a combination of the effect of rapid spread of misinformation, normative influence, and observational learning (Yuen et  al., 2020). The trust an individual places in the community and the government is also a part of social influence. Finally, the herd mentality can be seen in societies at the time of stress, as shown by social panic and hoarding goods. This is attributed to consumers being influenced by the behavior of others (Kameda & Hastie, 2015; Loxton et al., 2020).

3  Panic Buying and Health The phenomenon of panic buying is closely interconnected with public health and healthcare services. Under this bidirectional relationship, various public healthrelated events such as epidemics and pandemics can lead to panic buying; at the same time, panic buying can have great public health implications (Fig. 1). Some of the important consequences of panic buying are as follows.

3.1  Shortage of Health Products and Medicines Panic buying leads to acute shortages of health-care products. The type of product being bought depends on the nature of the crisis, the putative role of the product in managing the crisis and associated complications, and existing morbidities of the individuals.

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Fig. 1  Effect of panic buying on health and healthcare

In 1994, panic buying of broad-spectrum antibiotics led to shortages of medication during the outbreak of plague in Surat, India (Peterson, 2020). In the COVID-19 pandemic, the products (Fig. 2) with a role in the prevention and management of the infection such as hand sanitizers, medical masks, gloves, respirators, goggles, face shields, gowns, aprons, thermometers, inhalers antipyretics, and multivitamins were reported to have vanished from the marketplaces due to the sudden increase in the purchase (Lupton, 2020; PTI, 2020b). Almost 500% short-term increase in demand for products including rubbing alcohol, alcohol swabs, and wipes was reported from the U.S. before boosts in production could catch up with the demand (PTI, 2020c). Globally, shortages of personal protective equipment were also reported, leaving doctors, nurses, and other frontline workers ill-equipped to manage COVID-19 patients, endangering their own and patients’ health (WHO, 2020b). Even drugs with unconfirmed treatment effectiveness were sold out from shelves at the earliest reports of their role in the COVID-19 infection treatment. Thus, people with genuine needs were left without medication. This turned out to be the case with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, the drugs used to treat serious rheumatological conditions. Reports from multiple developed and developing countries have highlighted how news coverage on effective medicines for COVID 19 has

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Fig. 2  Panic buying of healthcare products during COVID-19 pandemic

resulted in people flocking to hoard such medicines, often without medical advice or a prescription. For example, in the USA, following publicization of the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and later dexamethasone, the demand for these drugs had increased by 600% and 1000%, respectively (Gibney & Zipp, 2020). In the Indian state of Punjab, the state Drug Controller remarked on the shortage of hydroxychloroquine due to hoarding and the Central Government decided to reschedule the drug to H1 status, meaning it could no longer be sold without a doctor’s prescription (Sharma, 2020). Similarly, there was a shortage of products essential for the care of patients with other illnesses such as diabetes (Weber, 2020). Another critical effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is on the supply of essential medicines. The shortfall has been observed in medicines for treating diabetes, hypertension, mental illness, and other conditions globally. The stockpiling occurred at every level of consumers including hospitals. In May 2020, it was reported that 38% of 211 essential medicines were in shortage in the USA (Gibney & Zipp, 2020). In India, shortages were reported even if there was no interruption in supply from the producers to the wholesalers, as people resorted to panic buying medicines (Gopal, 2020a). Kostev and Lauterbach (2020) reported a significant increase in the psychotropic, neurological, and cardiovascular drugs purchase by pharmacies from the

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wholesalers in Germany during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating an increase in demand for the medicines. Most of the drugs studied were purchased in higher-than-usual quantities. There was a more than one-third increase in the purchase of vitamin K antagonists, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, and beta-blockers. The purchase of other cardiovascular drugs including diuretics, calcium channel blockers, angiotensin II-antagonists, lipid-lowering drugs, and novel oral anticoagulants also increased. Psychotropics such as antidepressants, antipsychotics, hypnotics and sedatives, tranquilizers, antiepileptics, antiParkinson drugs, anti-dementia drugs were also purchased in higher quantities. This buying pattern suggests that people anticipated adverse times ahead and prepared themselves by stocking up essential medicines for chronic illnesses. They possibly also feared medication shortage and closure of pharmacies due to the pandemic (Kostev & Lauterbach, 2020).

3.2  Disruptions in the Supply Chain of Medical Products Changing demand for pharmaceuticals in the context of infectious disease outbreaks, induced-demand resulting from panic buying, and slow-down in large-scale production of APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) contribute to the supply chain disruptions which contributes to shortages of goods and medicines (Ayati, Saiyarsarai, & Nikfar, 2020). The disruptions in the supply chain affect not just medicines, but illicit drugs as well (Stevens & Hamilton, 2020). The disruption of distribution networks leads to fluctuating availability of illicit drugs. Sudden unavailability of drugs and alcohol leave the users prone to suffering withdrawal states. Besides, the chances of loss of tolerance to drugs such as opioids, has potential health implications in the form of increased overdose occurrences. Drug users often resort to substitutes during such periods. Alternatively, people who used drugs may resort to other potentially fatal opioids such as fentanyl and fentanyl analogues (Hillier, 2020).

3.3  Increase in Healthcare Costs An actual or perceived shortage of products results in inflation of prices. This adds to the financial burden of the poor, who often compromise their health needs in such situations, which can have a detrimental effect on health outcomes in the long run (McGrail, 2020). Five to eight times increase in prices of vitamin-C was reported following increased demand during the COVID-19 pandemic (Gopal, 2020b).

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3.4  P  roliferation of Substandard and Falsified Medical Products The sudden overwhelming demand for manufactured products leads to a shortage of raw materials due to the inability of the supply chain to fulfill demand, meanwhile, driving high the commodities’ prices. This gives rise to the business of profiteering when the manufacturers and sellers promote even substandard and falsified medical products and health supplements for different health issues of the clients. The proliferation of substandard medical products in the markets increases the overall healthcare burden. During disasters, governments also prioritize fulfilling the demands of the population, often compromising with routine quality checks as rigorous procedures demand time and resources (Besson, 2020). This was witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic when low-quality masks (falsely claimed to be N95 masks), gloves, and personal protective equipment were sold to consumers in various parts of the world (Hussain, 2020).

3.5  Increased Risk of Transmission of Infectious Diseases During epidemics of communicable diseases, the urgency created by the fear of shortage of products at market places because of panic buying compels people to neglect the risk of transmission of infection in order to go out and buy products. Over-crowding at marketplaces and pharmacies increases this risk, which is aggravated when people are forced to visit multiple stores/places, multiple times in search of the desired commodity.

3.6  Problems Due to Stockpiling Products The stockpiling of alcohol and substances of abuse by addicted users may lead to increased consumption of the substances by them, considering the fact that often there is an inability to control the substance use because of underlying psychopathology, especially when the stimulus in the form of substance lies in ample amounts with them. Increased use of alcohol has been reported from Australia and the UK, particularly in dependent users during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the various other contributing factors, the stocking of alcohol is one conceivable explanation for this phenomenon. However, further research is needed to clarify the impact of panic buying and stocking of alcohol on the pattern of drinking, and the health of dependent alcohol users. Similarly, instances of buying drugs in higher amounts have been reported (Hillier, 2020).

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3.7  P  ositive Effect on Treatment Adherence and Financial Security Natural disasters, anthropogenic hazards, and pandemics entail all sorts of uncertainties, including those related to health and safety. The anxiety or fear created by these uncertainties leads people to prepare for the anticipated adversities. It is often advisable to remain prepared in the face of such events. Geographical regions where natural disasters are frequent are often notified by the local governments to remain prepared in advance by keeping a stock of essential things with themselves and making safety arrangements. However, for disasters manifesting abruptly, even the most resourceful governments find it difficult to handle the situation adequately. Situations often unfold differently from what is expected and communicated to the public. Thus, it is understandable that the people try to prepare themselves at the earliest possible opportunity by stocking up the necessary commodities including health products and medicines. Especially, those on treatment for chronic conditions buy and stock medicines to prevent lapses in treatment caused due to possible closure of pharmacies, shortage of medications from the disrupted supply chain, issues related to accessibility (such as disruption of transportation routes; lockdowns), etc. (Besson, 2020). Thus, prompt buying of necessary medications may enable people to sustain adherence to medications. Fueled by the fear of untimely deaths and apprehensions related to financial risks associated with mortality, a large number of people opt for health and life insurances during and around disasters, which they otherwise might delay or not consider. A double-digit increase in the number of life insurance policy sales was reported from the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic (Iacurci, 2020; Seekings, 2020). The sudden increase in sales in the backdrop of pandemics and disasters, however, has long-term implications in the form of financial support during future ailments and debilitating illnesses.

4  Interventions to Address Panic-Buying Arafat, Kar, and Kabir (2020) gave a brief overview of the areas where interventions can help avoid consumers indulging in panic buying (Arafat, Kar, & Kabir, 2020). This included exercising control over media reports that heighten unnecessary panic, taking measures to promote a feeling of kinship in the affected communities, rationing essential products that are at risk of being hoarded, ensuring availability to the weaker socioeconomic sections, and statements for reassurance issued by governing bodies or public health authorities.

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4.1  Communicating Risk The Field Epidemiology Manual published by the CDC, USA, outlines the key principles for ideal risk communication. The key authorities to whom the public turn to in times of epidemics and other disasters are governments and especially public health authorities. As the public now increasingly get their information from online sources, communication by these bodies must also evolve (Tumpey, Daigle, & Nowak, 2019). The elements that determine the acceptability of messengers communicating risk are being perceived as honest, empathetic, dedicated, and competent (Reynolds & Quinn, 2008). Singapore’s approach to public health information while dealing with the SARS epidemic is appreciated, as the government made efforts to ‘treat fear through communication (Auyash, 2005). While communicating the decision to close schools, it was frankly stated that the measure was in response to concerns of the public. Governing bodies need to express empathy and hold public interest, in addition to communicating precise data (Liao et al., 2020).

4.2  Regulating Media Reports Studies have critically examined “infodemics,” widespread circulation of reports containing rumours, stigmatizing matter, and conspiracy theories (Islam et  al., 2020). One study found that an astounding 82% of claims made in 2311 such reports were false. This emphasizes the need for regulation of media reporting. A study analyzed the content of 214 English media reports till May 2020 on panic buying (Arafat et al., 2020). Nearly half of the reports highlighted the product in demand. Although a majority of them described the causes and impact of panic buying, only 27.1% detailed the remedial measures. Retail giants have used social media platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic to spread information on the continuing availability of essentials and advising shoppers to not panic-buy (Dumont, 2020). Another study sorted the positive and negative characteristics of media reports describing the panic buying events (Arafat et al., 2020). The media uses particular frames such as human interest, politicization, ethnicization, and others to define an issue and present it to the audience (Iyengar, 1996). In discussing COVID 19, the predominant frames used were fear/scare-mongering and human interest (Ogbodo et  al., 2020). This aspect of media-reporting can be monitored and regulated by governments. However, excessive regulation, as in the handling of the SARS epidemic in China and reporting by the state media may affect the rational preparedness that the general public can achieve on their own (Jinqiu, 2003).

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4.3  Timed Intervention Policy The menu of measures adopted internationally by governments to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic can be classified broadly as Lockdown Policy and Timed Intervention Policy (Bin et al., 2020). The former is a complete shutdown of socioeconomic activities to temporarily halt the spread of an epidemic while preparedness is improved and the latter comprises phased geographically restricted lockdowns and social-distancing, which is more sustainable to mitigate spread while causing minimal disruption to socioeconomic activities. A study by Prentice, Chen, and Stantic (2020) examined the effect of timed interventions on consumer behavior (Prentice et al., 2020). The study findings showed that in Australia, panic buying behaviors were at a minimum at the beginning of implementation of the Timed Intervention Policy, when restrictions were also minimum, and peaked as the restrictions grew increasingly tighter over the following month. However, they plateaued and decreased in the following months. This was postulated to be due to the government’s assurances of ensuring no disruption in supplies and pharmacies increasing prices of products like masks and sanitizers to counter stockpiling.

4.4  Quota Policy Quota policy refers to capping the amount of a product that an individual can purchase. A study that examined the effectiveness of quota policy on panic buying reached some important conclusions. Firstly, it was seen that consumers stockpiled products only if their valuation of the product was above a threshold, if they were uncertain of its future availability, or its cost was low (Shou, Xiong, & Shen, 2013). For example, in Australia, a body of retail owners of alcoholic beverages decided to implement liquor quotas in March 2020, in response to the government anticipating stockpiling of alcohol by people (AFP, 2020). Even by May 2020, the Liquor Traders Association of South Africa decided to submit a proposal to the government to reconsider its decision to allow off-premises consumption only during limited hours, citing the reason that this could lead to queuing, looting, and frustration (Staff Writer, 2020). States in India too witnessed the implementation of quota measures and staggering hours of sale by age-groups in order to facilitate social-distancing (Murari, 2020). In fact, the Tamil Nadu High Court suggested that online liquor sales be permitted for the same reason. In April 2020, France had to implement quotas for the sale of nicotine products for a different reason; the results of a recently published academic study seemed to state that smoking tobacco may be a protective factor for COVID-19 (Tidey, 2020).

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4.5  Essential Commodities Classifying a commodity as essential ensures that profiteering does not occur from the sale of a commodity that is temporarily in high demand and helps maintain the availability to consumers. The World Health Organization has developed lists of Disease Commodity Packages and more recently the Essential Commodities Forecasting Tool, from the experience garnered in the management of infectious disease outbreaks, as a rapid response is critical (WHO, 2020a). These data sheets provide a reference point for the commodities and technical expertise needed to respond to outbreaks effectively. Globally, countries manufacturing face masks, such as Taiwan, India, and Thailand, temporarily banned exports, anticipating domestic shortages (Zhou, 2020). However, countries such as Japan and Italy donated masks to China when it was the epicenter of the pandemic, which has been cited as good “mask diplomacy.” During outbreaks such as COVID-19, masks and sanitizers, which are essential to contain the spread, saw a burgeoning demand, and they were temporarily classified as essential commodities (Bhatia, 2020). Legal provisions, such as the Disaster Management Act of 2005 in India, have been invoked to ensure pricing regulation (Deepak, 2020). With regard to medicines, countries that depend upon imports for a majority of their drug requirements are likely to face supply shortages when trade channels are interrupted. Some measures that can limit the acute impact of shortages are the following: developing an essential medicines strategy that ensures supply under all conditions of priority drugs, preventing stockpiling of medicines by consumers by restricting purchases to supplies for a specified period, increasing capacity for mailorder and home delivery of medicines to ensure supply even under widespread quarantines, measures by health insurance companies to facilitate adequate purchases, and finally long-term strategies such as increasing domestic production capacities and having excess stock on hand in the event of disasters (Alexander & Qato, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic raised debates on the status of substances of abuse, including liquor and tobacco. Scenarios where only outlets vending essential commodities were allowed to function saw media reports emerging of deaths due to the unavailability of alcohol (Viswanath, 2020). The deaths were attributed to suicide, other health conditions complicating the course of alcohol withdrawal, and drinking alcohol that is not meant for consumption. As a response, in India, certain states such as Kerala and Punjab allowed beverage outlets to remain open in a restricted manner, citing that alcohol was an essential commodity (Archana, 2020).

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4.6  Legal Provisions In the scenario of the current COVID-19 pandemic, it is worthwhile to examine the legislative framework that has adversely aided or helped tackle the spread of this infectious outbreak. In the global context, when trade and other activities caused disease outbreaks to cross borders, the need for international legislation to contain outbreaks was recognized. The history of nations attempting multilaterally to convene legislations to counter the spread of yellow fever, cholera, and plague began with the International Sanitary Conference in 1851. This legislation introduced the concept of surveillance and reporting to the international community. It was carried forward in the WHO International Sanitary Regulations, which are legally binding on all member states, barring Australia (Aginam, 2002). The International Health Regulations confers, in theory, the WHO to pass sanctions on member countries that do not abide by the legislation. The WHO also has the authority to communicate with nodal points in each member country to assess reports of new outbreaks. Studying the legislation of China, the wet markets that facilitate wildlife trade had come under scrutiny following the 2002 SARS outbreak. Under China’s Wildlife Protection Law of 1988, it is legal to trade in the parts of wildlife, including endangered species, if the products accrue from captive specimens of species that appear on special “utilization lists” (EIA, 2020). Also, illegally acquired wildlife products may be auctioned after seizure, still leaving a venue for profiting from wildlife trade. When the COVID-19 disease outbreak was confirmed, the ambitious measures taken to contain the spread with extensive stringent ‘lockdowns’ were permitted to be taken according to several major legislations including the Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, which specifies control measures, the Frontier Health, and Quarantine Law, which permits lockdowns and mandatory quarantines, the Emergency Response Law, which specifies monitoring and preventive measures and the Penalties for Administration of Public Security that specifies administrative penalties for those disobeying government orders (Kapoor, 2020). Similarly, India evoked the Disaster Management Act, 2005, and the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897. The Epidemic Diseases Act confers additional powers on state governments to implement measures and penalize offending individuals to prevent the spread of an outbreak (Ahmad, 2015). The Disaster Management Act, allowed the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority to stabilize the price of masks and sanitizers, which was crucial in containing the spread.

4.7  Official Communications Transparency in the status of the availability of key commodities might help mitigate panic buying. As an example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has stated in a user-friendly, easy-to-access manner, the mechanism of food safety, and the sources of supply (Johansson, 2020). Also, it has directly and specifically addressed

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the common man’s concerns in terms of different food products, such as the reasons for empty shelves, inflated prices, and offered concrete reassurance about availability. Similarly, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs of the US issued a statement on the supply chain status of human drugs, medical devices, and blood and blood products individually (Office of the Commissioner, 2020).

4.8  Scaling Up Production Countries such as India, which are major global manufacturers of generics, were affected when the sourcing of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients from China was dented due to the COVID-19 pandemic (PTI, 2020a). This led to a response from multiple countries such as the USA and India to rapidly scale-up the manufacture of active pharmaceuticals domestically. This is hoped to be achieved through bilateral investments in setting up “mega bulk drug parks” (Sridhar, 2020). Also, through the Production Linked Incentive Scheme, financial incentives will be given to manufacturers on increasing their sales over the long-term.

5  Conclusion Panic buying is a phenomenon that has repeatedly surfaced in history at times of uncertainty such as during natural/human-made disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. It has a tremendous impact on the mental and physical well-being of those experiencing the period of uncertainty, particularly the marginalized sections of the population and those already suffering chronic illnesses. Hence, it is of utmost importance that governments and healthcare authorities and experts develop the resilience required to effectively weather any crisis that arises due to supply chain interruption. Such preparations must particularly take into consideration the supply of essential medicines and substances of abuse to prevent unnecessary anxiety, morbidity, and mortality. A study of the phenomenon enables understanding of the reasons why it occurs, such as social panic, survival instincts, herd-mentality, and social modelling and the role of different players such as manufacturers, suppliers, the media, the government, and the consumers. A comprehensive understanding must eventually lead to a multi-pronged approach directed towards each of the players and a systems-readiness that can be set into motion quickly and efficiently to mitigate the cost to humanity from an adverse event. Apart from measures taken by governments to maintain supply chains, healthcare and other experts need to duly prioritize research into optimum means and times for risk communication, which targets the psychological aspects of the phenomenon of panic buying. In conclusion, ensuring the availability of essential medicines and other products by keeping panic buying in check will go a long way towards minimizing the harm caused to populations from unforeseeable crises.

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Emergency Preparedness and Panic Buying Angi Alradie-Mohammed and Russell Kabir

1  Introduction Emergency preparedness plays a significant role in panic buying. Based on an anthropological point of view, humans like to prepare for future events; for example, from  before the industrial revolution and until  today, people worldwide still stockpile crops for dry seasons or preserve meat and store it while preparing for winter. Therefore, it is natural for humans to prepare for emergencies such as disaster as a survival and defence mechanism. Emergency preparedness differs worldwide according to the nature of the catastrophe or situation and the residents’ costumes exposed to the emergency. Political authorities implement the concept of preparedness as a tool and method of emergency management. Merging preparedness with management helped preparing tools to anticipate better and consequence of disaster/hazards/emergencies and manage the crisis more efficiently (Hémond & Robert, 2012). Emergency preparedness is one of the phases of emergency management, which are: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery (Laaser & Beluli, 2016; National Research Council, 2007).

2  Emergency Preparedness An emergency can be defined as a sudden, unpredictable event that poses a substantial threat and can severely affect life and property, crises differ in magnitude, duration, and extent of their geographical impact (National Research Council, 2007).

A. Alradie-Mohammed () · R. Kabir School of Allied Health, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Y. Arafat et al. (eds.), Panic Buying, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70726-2_4

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Emergency differs in definition from disaster, which is defined as an occurrence that disrupts the normal conditions of existence and causes a level of suffering that exceeds the capacity to adjust the affected community (World Health Organization, 2002). McEntire and Myers (2004) pointed out that there is no agreed-upon definition of the term “preparedness” and mentioned several definitions in their paper. For instance, in a civil security context (Hémond & Robert, 2012) define preparation as “all pre-event activities; the actions and measures of all kinds executed before the event that make it possible to put tools in place to better guide intervention and recovery.” While according to National Research Council (2007), preparedness “involves activities undertaken in the short term before disaster strikes that enhance the readiness of organizations and communities to respond effectively. Preparedness actions shorten the time required for the subsequent response phase and potentially speed recovery as well”. Emergency preparedness definition and activities differ according to the emergency preparedness level, in other meaning “the involved social unit”-household, organization, community, public or governmental… etc., (Sutton & Tierney, 2006) and according to the emergency setting, for example on a localized political aspect emergency preparedness can be defined as; “the readiness of a political jurisdiction to react constructively to threats from the environment in a way that minimizes the negative consequences of impact for the health and safety of individuals and the integrity and functioning of physical structures and systems” (Perry & Lindell, 2003). On a household level, we can define emergency preparedness as the process by which individuals or family members take the necessary percussions to survive a particular situation with minimum damages and losses safely. Because different emergency/disasters result in additional consequences, preparedness activities should either be generic “all hazards preparedness” or specific depending on the type of hazard or emergency (Laaser & Beluli, 2016), types of emergencies/disasters: 1. Natural hazards “storm, heat wave, freeze, earthquake, volcanic eruption, hurricanes, fires caused by natural phenomenon, floods, tornado, tidal wave.” 2. Human-made (civil) hazards or emergencies “wars, fires, terrorism, explosion, collision, shipwreck, structural collapse, environmental pollution, economic crisis). 3. Biological (bacterial, toxin, viruses). 4. Technological (nuclear accidents, chemical emergencies). Emergency/disaster situations occur worldwide, and each year those situations claim heavy losses in lives and cause substantial economic burden (Bodas, Siman-­ Tov, Kreitler, & Peleg, 2015). For an instant, from 2008 to 2017, there were 3751 natural hazards recorded based on data for 198 countries/territories (not including disasters caused by man or epidemics), with an estimation of 2 billion people affected, and USD 1658 billion estimated cost of damages around 141 countries (The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies IFRC, 2018). IFRC also reported 291 recorded epidemics, with 4,210,414 persons were

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affected by outbreaks over the mentioned period. The increase in the number of emergency events-human-made, biological, or natural-causes greater human populations exposure to those emergencies. Therefore, communities need to plan and prepare better for such events (Hémond & Robert, 2012). This highlights the importance of emergency preparedness and management. However, it is not enough to say that communities are prepared for emergencies; it is crucial for communities to establishing ordinances for emergencies (McEntire & Myers, 2004). McEntire and Myers (2004) mention several steps for government emergency preparedness, which include: setting emergency management ordinances; assessing hazards, vulnerability and risks; creating an emergency operations plan; developing a warning system; identifying and acquiring resources and grants; instituting mutual aid agreements; training; exercising and educating the public. It is the authorities’ role to plan, educate, and prepare their population for an emergency. Therefore, usually, individuals living in hazardous areas have a protocol they follow in preparing for emergencies. Those protocols are provided by the local government or organizations. For example, families living in areas where hurricanes occur conduct emergency preparedness by securing their homes and having a mandatory local evacuations plan to open shelters (National Research Council, 2007). Individuals should mentally plan for a disaster, as mental preparedness affect their survival and help them maintain a positive attitude toward emergencies rather than feeling overwhelmed by suddenly being a victim (Henry, 2019). It is advised for households and individuals to prepare for emergencies by following three steps (Public Safety Canada, 2012; The American National Red Cross, 2018; The Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2020): 1. Prepare an emergency kit. 2. Draw an emergency plan. 3. Be informed- know the risks. The order of the steps is not of importance as the preparation takes place before the emergency. The details of each step differ according to the type of emergency. The emergency kit should sustain the family members for at least three days, and it should include necessary supplies such non-perishable food and water, radio, flashlight, first aid kit, medications, important documents, some cash, a copy of the emergency plan, and other items that are related directly to the type of the emergency or family condition -like presence of children or specific need such as disability -(Public Safety Canada, 2012; The American National Red Cross, 2018). Summary of the emergency preparedness levels as per (Sutton & Tierney, 2006) and steps (McEntire & Myers, 2004; Public Safety Canada, 2012; The American National Red Cross, 2018; FEMA, 2020) are displayed in Fig. 1. The National Center for Disaster Preparedness NCDC at Colombia University, developed the “five Action Steps for Emergency Preparedness” model, because being prepared mean thinking about the possible hazards, the module is set to help individuals make a plan which increase their chances in achieve resilience during and after an emergency (NCDC, 2019), the model five actions are:

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Emergency preparedness

Household/ Family pereparendess

For individuals and families it is important to prepare for shelter, food, water, medicine, and sanitation.

Government prepoardness

Other levels: for example, public heath emergency preparedness, Army emergency preparedness, Fire department Emergency preparedness

It is the responsibility of the nation to prepare for emergencies and educate the public

1- Establishing emergency ordinances Steps:

2- Assessing hazards, vulnerability and risks

1-Prepare an emergency kit

4- Creating an emergency operations plan

2- Perpare a plan

5- Developing a warning system

3- Be informed

6- Identifying and acquiring resources and grants 7- Initiating mutual aid agreements 8- Training and exercising 9- Educating the public.

Fig. 1  Emergency preparedness levels and steps

1. Be aware and know your risks. 2. Assure water and Food; the model recommends stockpiling for three days, same as (Public Safety Canada, 2012; The American National Red Cross, 2018). 3. Protect yourself and Family by preparing the home for risks, preparing emergency kit, being familiar with the risks of staying at home, the locations of the nearby shelters and being prepared to make the decision of evacuating to shelter or remaining input. 4. Communicating with family and friends. 5. Engaging with community. In other words, the model seems to be similar to the “three steps” mentioned by (Public Safety Canada, 2012; The American National Red Cross, 2018), however it broke those three steps down into five steps for easy thinking about preparation.

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3  Emergency Preparedness and Panic Buying According to the literature, stockpiling has been an essential part of emergency preparedness on different levels, governments, organizations, and households. During emergencies, the normal supply chain may get disturbed, causing hardship in obtaining supplies and equipment (Paul and Hariharan 2012); therefore, governments and organizations prepare reserve to return to emergencies. For example; Stockpiling hospital supplies “ventilators, respiratory protective equipment to protect healthcare workers” by hospitals to prepare for an influenza pandemic, other emergencies and to ensure adequate surge capacity during a future emergency (Adida, DeLaurentis, & Lawley, 2011; Baracco, Eisert, Eagan, & Radonovich, 2015; Huang et al., 2017), food stockpiling at government facilitates to provide it the population during and after emergencies (Nozue, Ishikawa-Takata, Sarukura, Sako, & Tsuboyama-Kasaoka, 2014) and governments stockpile vaccines in preparation of outbreaks (Coombes, 2005; WHO, 2007). Individuals and families are advised to stockpile food, water, medicine, and other supplies that can last them at least three days in preparation for emergency “included in their emergency kit” (Public Safety Canada, 2012; The American National Red Cross, 2018). Additionally, the Japanese government advice their public to stockpile food for two weeks during emergency preparedness (Nozue et al., 2014). So, what is the difference between stockpiling during emergency preparedness and panic buying? The answer to that question is displayed in Table 1. It is safe to assume that those who are not prepared for emergencies are most likely to engage in panic buying because those who are prepared and well informed are less likely to feel not at control, be surprised by the emergency, and/or not trust their surroundings. However, individuals who are panic buying believe that they are preparing for the emergency. For example, Larson and Shin (2018) reported that 83% of useful shopping before the storm, shoppers reported that the storm’s preparation was their motive for shopping. Levac, Toal-Sullivan, and OSullivan (2012) reviewed the factors affecting individual’s preparedness for emergencies and stated that socio-economic and demographic factors influence a person’s ability and willingness to prepare for emergencies. They also listed the below influential factors: Table 1  Differences between stockpiling during emergency preparedness and panic buying Emergency preparedness stockpiling Includes a plan Gathering essential items “water, food, medicine.” Based on needs and calculated amounts, following the news, and being informed Stockpile for a known period” day, weeks.”

Panic buying Does not include a plan Can include essential and non-essential items Aggravated by psychological reasons, lack of preparedness, rumours, lack of social trust, fear of missing out and others No time frame

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1. Unpredictable nature of disaster and receptions about their immediacy and potential impact. 2. Individual’s cognitive factors: the importance they give to hazards, their level of connectedness to their community, their ability to cope with adverse situations. 3. Others: time pressure, lack of information, lack of financial resources. While (Yuen, Wang, Ma, & Li, 2020) listed factors influencing panic buying as: 1. Perception of threat and perception of scarcity of objects. 2. Fear of the unknown. 3. Coping behaviour. 4. Social psychological factors include social influence and social trust in government and communities. Arafat et al., (2020a, b, c) analysed media reports and identified the same factors mentioned by Yuen et al. (2020) in addition to additional factors which includes: 5. Increased demand of objects. 6. Perceived importance of the product. 7. Anticipation of price hike. 8. Other factors like rumours (Table 2). For example; during the last episodes of COVID-19 outbreak panic buying, we can see that individuals were unable to predict the government actions, uncertain of the period of lockdown, uncertain of the impact of the emergency, in addition to lack of social trust in the government and their community -especially after seeing pictures of empty shelves in media-. This all can shift emergency preparedness stockpiling for a few days to a panic buying behaviour (Arafat et al., 2020a, b, c; Yuen et al., 2020). Larson and Shin (2018) pointed out how fear during Hurricane Matthew was associated with a negative perception of access to buying supplies and consequently

Table 2  Factors affecting preparedness for emergencies versus factors influencing panic buying Factors affecting preparedness for emergencies  Socio-economic and demographic factors like time pressure, and financial resources influence the ability and willingness to prepare for emergencies

Factors influencing panic buying  Perception of threat  Perception of scarcity of objects  Fear of the unknown  Coping behaviour  Unpredictable nature of disaster and receptions about  Social psychological factors include their immediacy and potential impact social influence and social trust in government and communities  Increased demand of objects  Individual’s cognitive factors: The importance they give to hazards, their level of connectedness to their  Perceived importance of the product community, their ability to cope with adverse  Anticipation of price hike situations  Other factors like rumours  Others like lack of information

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associated with a high rate of shopping behaviours. However, if we assumed that individuals living in Hurricane areas should have been prepared for such situations, well educated, and trained by the responsible authorities, they should not have a negative perception of access to supplies or lack of trust in their society. However, Larson and Shin observed, how fear could alter individuals’ perceptions and caused panic buying.

4  Emergency Preparedness in Pandemic/Disaster Emergency preparedness consists of proper and adequate planning and responses to deal with any kind of disaster (Puryear & Gnugnoli, 2020). Globalization has made the recent world a large global village, and when an emergency strikes at a country, it may bring our great impacts on other countries. Hence, every country must pay more attention to an international emergency crisis to avoid the negative impacts (Ma & Zhang, 2013). Panic buying has been observed during public health emergencies since the ancient period (Arafat et al., 2020a, b, c). When an emergency strikes, several psychosocial and social factors influence human action (Savoia, Lin, & Viswanath, 2013). Recent evidence from Hungary revealed that the threat of COVID-19 had a huge impact on their retail sector. Also, it changed the shopping behaviour of the customers such as the shopping frequency, shop preferences, spending, product preference, and product avoidance, and the online survey also revealed panic buying among the surveyed respondents. Panic buying pushed them to purchase to stock some essential domestic products (Habil & Tamảs, 2020). Decision making by the general population during an outbreak or a disaster situation can be rational as they think that purchasing something is a good idea and relies on the level of risk attached to the purchase (Olds, 2020). It has been observed during the recent COVID-19 outbreak that regular consumer movement, capabilities, and purchases were restricted when the infection rate was rising globally, and this led to a change in consumer behaviour patterns (Loxton et al., 2020). Bacon and Corr (2020) found that both approaches related and defensive personality traits are responsible for concerns about the coronavirus among the general people and some people addressed their fears by isolating themselves and others were in a state of psychological conflict, and they try to overcome relieve their uncertainty through approach behaviours such as panic buying.

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5  Technology and Media Presentation The recent coronavirus pandemic indicated that domestic and world virus transmission contributes greatly to consumer panic (Keane & Neal, 2020). Over purchasing and storing necessary daily products is a common response to crises and generally observed in developed economies where there is normally an expectation of plentiful supply. This behaviour among the general population globally was observed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (Bentall et al., 2020). Panic buying is newsworthy and should be reported for the benefit of the larger population. It is the media outlets’ responsibility to avoid rumour-mongering and future forecasting while reporting panic buying (Arafat et al., 2020a, b, c). With the increasing cases of COVID-19, it is also reported that general people engage with more internet searches with fear-related emotions, protective behaviours, health knowledge, and more maladaptive behaviours (Du, Yang, King, Yang, & Chi, 2020). Through social media, local and international communities are connected, and people are now more aware of their common interests and are strongly tied to their peers through social media. It was found that to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, so many people followed their friends’ advice and persuasion about buying extra necessary food items (Naeem, 2020). It has been reported that social media has a significant impact on spreading fear and panic related to the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraq with a potential negative influence on peoples’ mental health and psychological wellbeing, and the report also added that there is a significant positive statistical correlation between self-reported social media use and the spread of panic related to COVID-19 (Ahmad & Murad, 2020). In some instances, people shared pictures, videos, and posts on social media platforms about the inaccessibility of daily essentials in the local markets, and these pictures, videos, and posts create more panic situation among the people, and people rushed to supermarkets and starts stockpiling to avoid further uncertainties (Naeem, 2020). Sukhwani, Deshkar, and Shaw (2020) shared that reliable access to accurate information can play an important role in managing panic buying among the general population. They also reported that during recent the COVID-19 outbreak, there is a lack of supporting evidence, and increased demand for food and groceries leads to a change in consumer behaviour in terms of panic buying and stockpiling among the residents of Nagpur city, India. The research also cited that despite government efforts to share accurate and reliable information, the residents of Nagpur city did not have reliable access to information related to the market availability of food products (Sukhwani et al., 2020). These days, social media platforms developed into a global village, and people can become more proactive in dealing with unknown challenges that come with a disaster and an outbreak. When the COVID-19 started, people from China and the US shared their experiences on social media; therefore, the people in the UK started panic buying and stockpiling essential items to stay home and avoid life threats (Naeem, 2020).

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Public health authorities should come forward to deal with the issue of panic buying, and media can play a vital role in prevention. Media factors responsible for spreading panic buying should be strictly monitored, and identification of fake news and reporting them to the appropriate authority may also be beneficial in the prevention of panic buying (Arafat et al., 2020a, b, c).

6  Emergency Preparation Recommendations It has been reported by Naeem (2020) that friends from national and international communities can play a role in informing their close friends how they can be protected from uncertainties and insecurities which they are facing in their own countries through social medial. Social media platforms bring people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and countries to one common platform, and people can share ideas for buying items and saving lives during pandemic situations. Health information and communications should include an emotional- motivational side and should not consider a ‘one size fits all’ approach because of personality differences matter (Bacon & Corr, 2020). During a crisis like an epidemic or pandemic, people will try to regain control over their safety and security. A potential means to cope with the conflict situation is that people will try to acquire as many goods as possible (Olds, 2020). Individuals should follow their national or regional authorities’ guidelines in preparing for emergencies and should not pay attention to rumours and fear of missing out. One of the things that societies should learn from the COVID-19 panic buying, that although the supply chain had been disturbed, it recovered fast. Governments are the main responsible for training the public on emergency preparedness and keeping them informed through known channels (McEntire & Myers, 2004). Therefore, it is of great importance for authorities to take into account the special needs of individuals, their socio-economic, psychological characteristics, education level, and other factors that can cause inequality or inequity during emergency planning policies and actions (Levac et al., 2012). Additionally, gaining and maintaining trust with the public during emergencies through continuous information sharing and disapproving any rumours and misinformation, and reassuring the public (Yuen et al., 2020). For the public to be prepared for emergencies, they should be empowered with preparedness education and risk communication; which should focus on achieving awareness of the upcoming hazard risk, behaviour change toward proper emergency preparedness, and warning of consequences (Laaser & Beluli, 2016), preparing the public for emergencies can reduce anxieties, fear and restore trust in the authorities and therefore reduce panic buying.

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7  Conclusion Although authorities are responsible of planning, educating and training their community on emergency preparedness, it is also the responsibility of households and individuals to prepare for emergencies by making a comprehensive plan while evaluating their risks, stockpiling necessities based on their needs, and being informed on the situations underpin. Being prepared for emergencies can reduce panic buying behaviour induced by rumours, desire to gain control and fears.

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Mass Media and Panic Buying S. M. Yasir Arafat

, Md. Aminul Islam, and Sujita Kumar Kar

1  Introduction Mass media—the press, radio, television, and online news platform—is a powerful social institution that influences other institutions of the society in various ways (Hjarvard, 2012). The influences can either be obvious or latent (Perse & Lambe, 2017). In most cases, the obvious functions are readily observed and the media messages are sent with clear objectives. On the other hand, latent functions refer to the impacts that are not as easy to be observed or unintended. Several studies indicate that the media has a strong social and cultural impact on society (Hodkinson, 2017; Velacherry, 1993). Because of its omnipresence, it also influences on human behavior, perception of the world, decisions at personal, social, and state-level through repeated exposures of certain issues and use and misuse of experts (Gene Zucker, 1978; Mathias Kepplinger, 2007; Shephard, et al., 2016; Wu & Shen, 2017). It also plays a powerful role in constructing public beliefs and attitudes, shaping public opinion, and public debate focusing public interest on particular issues or topics (Anastasio, Rose, & Chapman, 1999; Barabas & Jerit, 2009; Belchior, 2020; Happer & Philo, 2013; Simon & Jerit, 2007). Today, mass media is at the heart of social life because it keeps up an eye on all the world’s happenings and brings information to human society (Lasswell, 1948). It plays a central role in illuminating approximately what happens within the physical world, especially in cases where the people don’t have the scope to get direct knowledge or experience. Through S. M. Y. Arafat () Department of Psychiatry, Enam Medical College and Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh M. A. Islam Department of Media Studies and Journalism, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), Dhaka, Bangladesh S. K. Kar Department of Psychiatry, King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Y. Arafat et al. (eds.), Panic Buying, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70726-2_5

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interpretations of the social process, putting the scattered issues or events in a meaningful context, and transmitting social norms and values, the mass media helps keep up social order (McCormack, 1961). It also decodes all social, economic, political, scientific, national, and international processes; discloses threats and opportunities to the society, and guides the society as a response to the threat and opportunities in a decision, policymaking, and acting. But this function refers to how the selection and interpretation of certain news by the media affect the understanding and reaction of society to it. With the rise of risks and uncertainty in the world, the pervasive role of the media in human life has been growing day by day. A responsible media system should aim to raise awareness in times of crises such as natural disasters, conflict, health threats, diseases, and epidemics by offering the requisite precise details about what is happening, what needs to be done, and ways to minimize people’s uncertainty. The world has faced regular threats and uncertainties that are natural and human-­ made. The well-being of humans is hampered by numerous environmental catastrophes, health threats, pandemics, epidemics, endemics, and outbreaks. The accidents produce numerous social and moral deviations that lead individuals to the immediate future to secure essential things. The tendency becomes highly prevalent with the increase of national uncertainties and the spread of misinformation. Several social, economic, and media factors contribute to the perception of risk and behavioral actions such as panic buying—purchasing, hoarding, and stockpiling—of extra quantities of particular products or commodity in response to sudden fears of perceived or real scarcity or price rise, which results in instability of the market, supply chain management, and the society as a whole. The panic buying phenomena reveals a blind spot in the modern societies—an increase in selfishness (Szocik & Lindberg, 2017); a decrease in social trust (Misztal, 1996); reduction of altruism and prosocial behavior (Simpson & Willer, 2015) such as helping, sharing, and understanding the feelings of others; the decline of social capital (Clark, 2014; Paxton, 1999; Putnam, 1995, 2000), increasing social inequality (Blossfeld & Buchholz, 2009; Wilkinson, 1996); uncontrolled and greedy market system, poor supply chain management (Snowdon, 2015); and games in international politics. Panic buying behavior is nothing new (Arafat, Kar, & Shoib, 2020a). Recently, the world has experienced panic buying of various goods such as masks, hand sanitizers and oxygen cylinders. Despite having a long history of panic buying, the academic study of the phenomenon is very new (Arafat et al., 2020f). However, it is getting much attention to scholars from multiple disciplines such as economics, marketing, psychology, sociology, public health, media studies, and communication. Most of the existing literature on the topic focus on the psychological and economic aspect of the phenomena (Arafat et al., 2020c; Arafat et al., 2020d; Habel et al., 2020; Yuen et al., 2020). Even media discourse revolves around policy failure and economic impact. A critical observation of media reports around the world and reviews of academic literature, and interview with businessmen and general people reveal that amount of media coverage; frames used for describing risks; the tone of media coverage; media’s sources of information, and their perceived trustworthiness; formats of media

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Fig. 1  Theories explaining the role of media in panic buying

content; and types of media channels play (Arafat et al., 2020b) an influential role panic buying behavior of people. This chapter tries to understand the phenomenon through the lens of the role of media in panic buying covering the causative model as well as the preventive measures. Drawing upon, various media, communication, and social psychology theories such as agenda-setting theory, framing theory, priming theory, social cognition theory, and theories of risk perception, it offers an understanding of the role of mass media in influencing panic buying behavior among people (Fig. 1). Finally, it provides some recommendations for policymakers and media managers on controlling panic buying.

2  What Is Panic Buying? Precisely panic buying is an irrational response to the perceived risk of scarcity of necessary products to ensure security and establish control over the risk (Arafat et al., 2020g). It often stems from the fear of scarcity and uncertainty about the future (Arafat, et al., 2020b; Philip & Cherian, 2020; Yuen et al., 2020). It is an emotional reaction to an uncertain situation driven by anxiety and fear of the unknown that leads to irrational behavior and the decision of overbuying, hoarding, and stapling of product, despite not having actual needs. It is an act of buying large quantities of a particular product or commodity due to sudden fears of a

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forthcoming shortage or price rise (Arafat et al., 2020g). People make overbuying of products in response to a predicted or actual uncertainty and unavailability in the market. Panic buying may or may not be associated with actual product shortages. Nevertheless, it is mostly driven by the fear of scarcity. Arafat et al. (2020g) identified some key constructs of panic buying phenomena. Those are a sudden increase in buying commodities which are usually items of daily needs; purchased quantities are more than regular need; the behavior is usually provoked by adverse events that instill fear about scarcity, and it creates an imbalance between supply and demand. The behavior is usually impulsive; however, it may also be well planned. In uncertain situations, human beings intrinsically try to control the environment they live in (FeldmanHall & Shenhav, 2019; Leotti, Iyengar, & Ochsner, 2010). In reality, they cannot control anything except their behavior. Panic buying allows them to feel a sense of control. So, they try to transform their fears into self-­fulfilling prophecies stocking up, or hoarding of goods to establish a feeling of control in lives. Irrespective of culture cultures and geographical locations, such response to uncertainty is almost similar all over the world (Arafat et al., 2020b). Actual or perceived sufferings, emotional contagion, reactions of other people heighten anxiety among the people (Barsade, 2002; Zhang & Lu, 2013). When they see that people around them are panicked, the fear, anxiety, and irrational behaviors deepen in them thinking that certainly others know something they do not know (Sullins, 1991). So, they do follow other people’s buying behavior (neighbors, family members) to avoid the risk of uncertainty; protect the fulfillment of family daily needs; maintain family health. Moreover, the panic buying is fueled by increased media coverage with video and images; a growing distrust of authorities’ ability to keep people safe or tell them the truth; a herd instinct that is triggered by fear and spread through social media platforms; a lack of clear and accurate information about supply and availability of products, actual scarcity of goods, stock on the market, lack of trust with government information, lack of trust in media messages, escalating misinformation on social media as they heighten risk perception and create a volatile situation in the society (Arafat et al., 2020b, d, e; Hossain, Ferdous, & Siddiqee, 2020; Yuen et al., 2020).

3  Theoretical Perspectives of Mass Media and Panic Buying Some theoretical frameworks from media and communication, social psychology, and economics help understand the media’s role in panic buying. The media and communication theories include Agenda Setting Theory (McCombs, 1997; McCombs & Shaw, 1972; McCombs, Shaw, & Weaver, 2014), Framing Theory (Fairhurst & Star, 1996), Media Dependency Theory (Littlejohn, 1999), Priming Theory (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen, & Carpentier, 2002), and Cultivation Theory (Mosharafa, 2015; Potter, 2014). Moreover, some theories in social

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psychology can guide to the panic buying issues. The theories include social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2002) and risk perception. The press tells us the subjects are important to us according to the Agenda Setting Theory. They represent not reality but mediate and influence reality. The intense focus of the press on certain subjects makes issues and problems more important to the public than others. When panic sales are made, the press tells the public that the nation has now a major issue. The issue is triggered by the lack of government policies and decisions that will impact the lives and livelihoods of people. Meanwhile, the framing theory hypothesizes that the press shapes the perception of reality by telling people repetitively what to think about and how to think about it. Public interpretation of the reality is shaped by how mass media select the issues or events to cover or not to cover; decisions of media owners, news managers, journalists to define and interpret the issues, and the particular pattern of interpretations presented before the public (Yan, 2020). It focuses on particular problems, events, and occurrences in that case, and then positions them within an area of meaning and emphasizes a certain pattern of interpretations. The mass media incorporate certain facets of the topics they cover and remove others simultaneously in the framing process. By choosing words, photos, tones, viewpoints, and angles contained in the news reports and other material, inclusion and exclusion occur. Mass media creates and influences the understanding of people’s scarcity of some goods, perception of risk and terror, and plan to stockpile those goods through the framing method. The media frame the emergency in most cases to compel people to believe that there will be shortages, price rise, and long-term risk. On the other hand, the principle of priming notes that by supplying the viewer with expectations and reference frames, the media says whether something is good or bad. Priming occurs by choosing news outlets and experts. According to the Media Dependence Theory, there is an integral relationship among audiences, media, and the broader social structure. People become dependent on media to meet their needs in various contexts, such as a lack of social cohesion and stability; social change and tensions are high; established institutions, values and beliefs, and traditions are in question. The needs are not always strictly personal but may be shaped by the culture of various social conditions. Existing social norms and values are being replaced by individualism and consumerism. There is a lack of social trust, respect, and prosocial behavior. Despite connected through various communication devices, people are alone in the crowd and lonely islands of the self. They do not believe and trust their close relatives and neighbors in any uncertain situation and even themselves. In making any personal decision, they depend on the media content and messages they come across. They try to feel their very existence by exposing themselves highly to the mass media. Their values to life and lifestyles, consumption, and buying behaviors and actions are highly influenced by the media messages. In most cases, they feel comfortable living in a world of negativism. During an emergency, negative information spread fast. Meanwhile, the cultivation theory states that television messages shape concepts of social reality. Individuals with high television exposure are likely to be more affected by how the world of issues and events are presented than individuals who

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watch less; particularly when it comes to subjects the audience has little first-hand knowledge with. The televised message intensifies the impact of cultivation among people when what people see on the television screens is what they experience in their real-life. There is also evidence that exposure to mass media can lead to distorted and inaccurate perceptions about the nature, prevalence, and causes of social problems. The social cognitive theory hypothesizes people are producers and products of social systems, and their thought, affect. Actions are the results of interactions between three factors—personal determinants, behavioral determinants, and environmental determinants in a particular situation. The environment—both social and physical—refers to the variables that can influence an individual’s actions. Family members, acquaintances, and colleagues are part of the social environment. On the other hand, the physical environment is the structure of the living place and certain foods’ availability. Meanwhile, the situation is the perception of place, time, and physical characteristics and behavior by a person. Mass media, directly and indirectly, influence human thinking and behavior through relation to powerful social structures and reinforcement of preexisting behavior types. By defining what is important and reflecting the lives and actions of the dominant classes of society, the media sets the public agenda for debates. Media depictions heighten uncertainty and anxiety in the case of panic buying, which causes people to seek support and advice from their social networks. The fear and anxieties are transformed in irrational behavior such as hoarding of excessive products to ensure security for themselves and family members. Perceptions of risks are thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about future danger, damage, threat, harm, or the possibility of a loss (Darker, 2013). There are some theoretical models (Lundgren & McMakin, 2009; Roeser et  al., 2012) that help understand how people perceive risk, process information related to risk, and make decisions about the risks (Paek & Hove, 2017), threats, dangers, and emergencies. The models include the psychometric paradigm (Cha, 2000; Marris, Langford, & O’Riordan, 1998; Siegrist, Keller, & Kiers, 2005; Slovic, 1990), the risk perception model (Das & Teng, 2001; Paul, 2016), the mental noise model (Covello, 2010; Morgan et al., 2002), the negative dominance model (Rozin & Royzman, 2001), the trust determination model (Peters, Covello, & McCallum, 1997), and the social amplification of risk framework (Kasperson et  al., 1988; Pidgeon & Henwood, 2010). The models and theories related to risk perception mainly deal with understanding and explaining the risk phenomenon from psychological, cognitive, social, and cultural perspectives. According to the theories, in most cases, people assess risks based on their subjective perceptions, intuitive judgments, and information obtained through various media coverage of issues, events, or situations. Several factors, such as psychological, social, institutional, and cultural processes, affect the decrease or amplification of risk perception and behavioral response to the risks. David Ropeik (2002) identified 14 specific factors that affect the perception of risk: trust vs. lack of trust, imposed vs. voluntary, natural vs. human-made, scope catastrophic vs. chronic, the dread factor, hard to understand, uncertainty, familiar vs.

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new, awareness, a known victim, future generations, does it affect me? Risk vs. benefit and control vs. no control. For example, people tend to be more afraid when they do not have trust in the information provided by the government official. Journalists must understand how and why people perceive risks because they can deal with risk-related issues with more caution, care, and balance. They can interview people who are upset and frightened, more insightfully. They can gather facts and information with greater perspective and insight. They can write their stories with more balance. It also can help them to avoid the trap of playing up stories about minimal risks and ignore stories about significant risks.

4  The Causative Role of Media in Panic Buying Evidence from several studies indicates that the way media frame and cover an issue or a topic and how and what they include in and exclude from the news stories influence people’s understanding and perception of the topic or issue (Ahmad & Murad, 2020; Arafat et al., 2020e; Gore et al., 2005; Happer & Philo, 2013; Kapuściński & Richards, 2016; Otieno, Spada, & Renkl, 2013). News messages containing words, images, and sounds that arise emotions such as fear, dread, worry, fright, and anxiety influence perception of risks at the personal and societal level (Paek, Oh, & Hove, 2016). With the increase of exposure to fear-themed news messages, level of fear, and risk perception; the communicative behaviors such as an intention to talk about the fear and risk with others, seeking information and help for making a decision is increased to ensure safety against potential threats. So, it can be argued that the mediated risk perception does not cause individual behavior directly instead of influencing general risk perception (Wahlberg & Sjoberg, 2000), which influences behavioral actions such as panic buying. The volume, breadth, and prominence of news media coverage shape people’s perception about government’s policy and action (Barabas & Jerit, 2009), and the perception often becomes negative (McCarthy et al. 2008), which leads to non-adherence to government recommendations in risks and uncertain situations. Analyzing the content of 525 news reports from around the world, Arafat et al. (2020b) concluded that mass media often portrays the issues of panic buying negatively, but there are variations in reporting patterns between high-income and low– middle-income countries. Such portrayals amplify the risk perception, uncertainty, and thus panic buying through communicating the panic buying in the headlines of the news stories, unnecessarily mention the cause of panic buying, sensationally presenting visuals, referring to similar incidents elsewhere or in the past, blaming the public, the market and people in business, and the government. Moreover, mass media tends to present panic buying events dramatically. While covering panic buying issues, media reports often contain information about the products people are buying excessive, the images of empty shelves, failures of the government’s measures, and policies (Arafat et al., 2020b). The visual representations of empty shops and the massive queues of people waiting for buying products indicating the

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scarcity of specific goods may heighten tension, anxiety, and fear among the people, fueling irrational buying (Arafat et al., 2020b, f). Certainly, panic buying is newsworthy, and the news media should report it (Arafat et al., 2020f). However, when journalists repeatedly tell the people that their neighbors are buying too much for stores to keep essentials in stock, the coverage becomes part of the problem (Arafat et al., 2020e). In reporting the issues related to panic buying, mass media often ignore the broader context and the relevant data that people need to make informed decisions during an uncertain and emergency. The terms “out of stock” used news reports, analysis, or commentaries to get the people’s intensive attention. Then it becomes viral in the social media platforms, which intensify buying and hoarding behavior. Because if someone reads, sees, or hears that food runs out, they are more likely to go shopping. Moreover, sensationalist angles of the news stories those portray markets as war zones overflowing with crazed consumers also heighten risk perception during an emergency that fuel panic buying (Arafat et al., 2020e). However, the fact is that there is no lack of images and videos depicting the world’s mass hysteria of buying products beyond need. Mass media’s role in panic buying can be understood through the lens of its political economy (Bhuiyan, 2002; Rahman, 2009). In the developing countries, the media cannot play its fundamental role during risks, emergencies, and uncertain situations because of multiple factors—media owners’ business interests, a lack of democracy and freedom of expression, lack of skilled professionals in the media industry, and a lack of a sustainable business model for the media industry. In most cases, the owners establish the media organizations as part of their other business ventures and to ensure safeguards for the ventures. For example, in Bangladesh, most of the media owners have pharmaceutical companies, the business of foods and agro-products, huge investment in the stock market. In the case of panic buying of medicines, drugs, foods, and shares, there is a possibility of hidden financial hidden gains. So, the media tend to create narratives, frame the crisis, and portray the events in a way that serves the purpose of the owners’ business interests. On the other hand, the lack of democracy and freedom of expression create a country’s hegemonic situation. The relationship between the citizen, the society, and the state become fluid. Everyone wants to ensure the interest of the self. As a social institution, mass media is not an exception to this, and it tends to be part of the power. Being part of the power system, mass media cannot present the actual truth. It becomes a drum or mouthpiece of the system to ensure its self-interest and sustainability. The media just try to reflect the social process, not interpret or analyze it. In covering panic buying issues, the media only present visible issues and set the agenda for blaming the government. With repetitive superficial and visual presentations of panic buying incidents, a chaotic situation is created that serves the purpose of the market’s vested interests. On the other hand, due to the lack of efficiency journalists, they cannot understand the breadth and depth of panic buying issues. They become over-dependent on the government agencies and officials for information, and merely relay the information to the public what is told or sent through press releases. People in developing countries often do not believe the government information as those does not either reflect the reality or hide the reality. As a result, media-constructed reality and

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the people’s realities contradict that lead to an escalating mistrust, confusion, and panic in society. In this situation, the incidents of panic buying become very frequent and expected in a country. Moreover, unskilled journalists often fail to present the full context of an uncertain situation or an emergency, and people often misinterpret the message of the news stories lacking the context. In informing and educating the people, the media portray the situations in a sensational way and communicate negativism. In a society where there is a lack of media and information literacy, negativism spread fast in misinformation and rumors, which create confusion and doubts and heighten panic and panic buying. Due to poor health and media literacy, people usually change their behavior without any substantial evidence. The messages they get from mass media into behavior and actions.

5  Preventive Role of Media in Panic Buying Mass media can play an influential role in preventing panic buying by framing the issue positively. Accurate and impartial communication of government actions and policies to tackle the situation can create trust among the people. Because people will not be panicked and not try to take control of the uncertain situation by themselves through hoarding massive quantity of products if they are assured that the market is under the control of the government, its actions and policies will ensure the availability of sufficient products in the market, it can manage the supply chain efficiently, and the situation will not linger for a long time (Arafat et al., 2020e). Panic buying occurs when tensions and uncertainty prevail in society, there is a lack of accurate information, and there is an overflow of misinformation, disinformation, and rumor. This situation can be tackled through accurate informational interventions and communication of truth. Mass media can intervene in the situation by communicating the opinions of real experts, not pseudo-experts. However, the experts’ selection must be impartial, unbiased, and authentic because the pseudo-­ experts may serve the purpose of vested interest in the guise of expert opinion, which may lead to more confusion and damage of public trust in the media organizations. News and analysis must explain the psychology of panic buying so that people can understand their irrational behavior and decisions to hoard a huge quantity of products despite not having the need. Mass media should frame incidents in such a way that people can understand the existing situation is not an individual’s problem rather it is a problem of the entire society; buying and hoarding products may lead to unavailability for others in their dire needs. So, the tone of the news stories should be “if an individual buys extra product today, he/she may not get the same product in dire need in the future because others will buy it in the same way. Moreover, poor people may be affected worse because of the market’s unavailability and high price. So, media can encourage prosocial behavior and cooperation among the people through communicating the real impact of panic buying. Mass

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media can play an instructive role by telling the people and the government what measures should be taken to tackle the situation. Arafat et al. (2020d) identified some psychological factors that influence panic buying, which include fear of scarcity and losing control over the situation, a sense of insecurity as a result of the fear, and amplification of fear and anxiety by the social networks in which an individual lives in. This amplification of fear may be defined as a domino effect (Philip & Cherian, 2020). Mass media can play a significant role in stopping the domino effect by not framing the situation as a severe one that would affect people’s lives and livelihood. Widespread coverage of panic buying often encourages people hoarding irrationally. Because people try to justify their irrational behaviors by seeing others’ behavior in the television screen or printed texts in the newspaper and online platforms; however, a responsible role of the mass media can shape the public decisions of buying and hoarding by presenting optimistic perspectives (Zheng et al. 2020). For example, Arafat et al. (2020e) argued that responsible mass media could significantly prevent panic buying. To prevent panic buying, the media should avoid publishing of news stories with visuals of empty shelves. On the other hand, government agencies should provide the media with accurate information to build trust in government agencies capable of managing the emergency, controlling market system, ensuring proper functioning of the supply chain management system, and ensuring the availability of products through import from the international market. Instead of sensationalizing panic buying and blaming the stakeholders, media should address the worries, anger, and frustration of mass people. The news reports should avoid mentioning the public reaction and interrogating people on sensitive matters related to panic buying. Mass media can encourage people to deal with the situation through the communication of humane, empathetic, and consistent messages. To prevent panic buying, media reports, and analysis should humanize the impacts of panic buying by framing it as a community issue instead of an individual one. Every story about panic buying should explain why hoarding is unnecessary and bad for society at large. The tone of news story stories should avoid to mention the over-buying products that can hurt the neighbors.

6  Reporting Guidelines for Panic Buying Based on the evidence by Arafat et al. (2020b, f), several characteristics have been identified (Table 1). While reporting the issues related to panic buying, journalists should consider disseminating the positive news and reducing the report’s negative characteristics. 1. Media organizations and journalists should not allow personal interest, or any belief, commitment, payment, gift, or benefit, which may undermine the accuracy, fairness, or independence of the story. 2. The news stories should not use the terms of fear and words like “out of stock.”

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Table 1  Characteristics of panic buying news report Positive characteristics 1 2 3 4 5 6 Negative characteristics 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Discuss the government action/initiatives Discuss the expert opinion/recommendations Discuss the psychological aspects of panic buying Discuss the rumors related to panic buying Suggest remedial measures of panic buying Mentioning the impacts of panic buying The title of the news post mentions about panic buying Mentioning the cause of panic buying in the news post Show the photo of empty shelves/picture of panic buying Refers to a similar incident elsewhere or in the past Media blaming government for panic buying Media blaming the public for panic buying Media blaming people from business farms and marketing houses Media dramatize/sensationalize the panic buying behavior Discusses public reaction to panic buying Presents future forecasting of panic buying

3. The headlines must not fuel fear or uncertainty. 4. Visuals and images should be selected with the best care. Sensationalist photos and videos of empty shelves and competing customers may fuel panic buying. So, the visuals that may trigger uncertainty and fear should be avoided. 5. Avoid any content that might contradict what people are experiencing. 6. The news media stories should frame the issue to reduce self-interest attitude among the people, 7. The tone of the news stories should promote a sense of cooperation and socially responsible behavior. 8. The message in the news story should emphasize the feelings of kinship between shoppers. 9. News stories should downplay the idea that everyone is panic buying, hoarding, or stockpiling goods beyond their needs. 10. The news media should give less coverage to panic buying. 11. The news stories should promote acts of generosity to encourage socially minded tendencies and cooperation. 12. The news stories should explain how overbuying may affect the people in the future and may encounter the same people in the same situation again. 13. The news stories should advocate punishment for acting selfishly, such as overbuying beyond needs. 14. The mass media should promote social sanctions – such as naming and shaming or ostracizing those who hoard.

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15. Media should take efforts to educate public about the repercussions of panic buying and should discuss the remedial measures as well as social responsibilities.

7  Conclusion Proving a direct relationship between news coverage of panic buying and changes in the situation is challenging.  Fears can arise amid uncertainty. Without trusted evidence to counter it, the panic in society would be much worse. If there is no reliable and responsible journalism, rumors will become the only information available to create chaos and disorder in society.

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Social Perspectives of Panic Buying Pawan Sharma and Manjila Pokharel

1  Introduction The core concept of social psychology revolves around the idea that the behavior of an individual is influenced by the social situation around him (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2005). The social situational determinants of an individual’s behavior may be seen as falling into one of the following categories: interpersonal, group, organizational, community, or societal/cultural (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2011). For example, we tend to explain a person’s behavior by studying the effect of communal behavior upon him. Studies among people during a disaster or extreme predicament have concluded two facts. Firstly, psychological responses appear to follow a set pattern and they are not as diverse, discordant or haphazard as seen from outside. Secondly, this pattern of behavior is true across different types of disasters (Leach, 1994). Survival psychology provides an insight that individuals may undergo behavioral changes due to the occurrence of particular events like natural disasters, healthcare crises and terrorist attacks. These behavioral changes could be negative occurrences like herd mentality, panic buying, changes to discretionary purchasing habits, and investment decision making (Forbes, 2017). In a state of panic, people’s judgment and reasoning is deteriorated that often leads to self-­ destructive behavior. In the state of panic, people usually stick to one specific escape route and remain oblivious to other routes. The four basic elements of panic during a disaster are time or space restriction on escape, concern for own survival and signs of altruism diminished or deteriorated, irrational or illogical response to the crisis

P. Sharma () Department of Psychiatry, Patan Academy of Health Sciences, School of Medicine, Lalitpur, Nepal M. Pokharel Department of Social Work, Xavier International College, Kathmandu, Nepal

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Y. Arafat et al. (eds.), Panic Buying, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70726-2_6

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situation, and behavior shown to be highly contagious and widespread if sparked by someone in authority or someone with high credibility (Leach, 1994). All human beings are members of a society. Therefore, the decisions made by them are influenced by the attitudes, opinions, and beliefs of the larger social group. Social influence is a way in which individuals adjust their behavior in order to meet the demands of a social environment. Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has shed some light upon different social behaviors; panic buying being one. Panic buying is a group behavior where huge quantities of daily supplies are purchased often leading to stock out situation and disruption to supply chains. It has been defined by Arafat and his colleagues as a phenomenon of a sudden increase in buying of one or more essential goods in excess of regular need provoked by adversity, usually a disaster or an outbreak resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand (Arafat et al., 2020d). A sense of perceived scarcity, need to be in control, social learning, and lack of confidence in the authorities have although been proposed as potential drivers of panic buying, its psychological underpinnings are yet to be clear (Arafat et al., 2020b). Various factors have been identified for the panic buying from content analysis of 613 media reports. A sense of scarcity, increased demand, the importance of the product, anticipation of price hike, ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its related factors were the major ones. Also, other reported factors were rumor, psychological factors (safety-seeking behavior, uncertainty, anxiety reduction, taking control), social learning, lack of trust, government action, and past experience (Arafat et  al., 2020c). The four major causes of panic buying as established by research conducted by Yuen et al. are: (1) perception, (2) fear of the unknown, (3) coping behavior, and (4) social psychology. This study elicited that more than half of the research done on panic buying concur it to be triggered by individual’s perception. Social psychological causes, fearing of the unknown, and the coping behavior being the second, third, and fourth factors, respectively, to cause panic buying (Yuen, Wang, Ma, & Li, 2020).

2  Theories of Social Psychology to Explain Panic Buying When consumers perceive the probability and consequences of contracting a disease to be high, they are motivated to undertake self-protective activities, including panic buying, to minimize perceived risk (Yuen et  al., 2020). There are two key factors from social psychology that have major impact on panic buying, social influence and social trust. Social influence is the effort by one or more members of the society to change the behavior, attitudes, or feelings of one or more persons (Baron & Branscombe, 2014). The different social influences that could explain the phenomenology of panic buying could be self-fulfilling prophecy, normative influence, and observational learning. Humans are the fundamental units of the society and have the needs to belong to the social groups. We, as a member of society, tend to agree on common values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that minimize the in-group threat. When majority of

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the members in the society behave in a certain way or make certain decision, we feel obliged to follow them. In this digital era with information being readily available at the finger tips, the information like rumors  of stock-out could create a fear of missing out or confusion that could culminate into panic buying of such goods. This could in turn propagate the false notion of stock-out i.e. once false prophecy (Borgy, Bouthevillain, & Dufrénot, 2014). Similarly, in case of normative influence, an individual as a social unit gets valuable information from others and it sometimes outweighs their own views and perception. Ambiguous situation and crisis situation produce informational influence. In ambiguous situation (like whether to panic buy or not, whether to invest in a company or not, etc.) people do not know how to behave, so they turn to others to get the information, whereas in crisis situation, people do not have time to think for themselves and they conform to others’ behavior with an assumption that others know what they are doing. It produces a private acceptance, which is a genuine belief that others are right (Baumeister & Bushman, 2013). This influences others to the conformance of a behavior either by peer pressure or by word of mouth and lead to panic buying (Yangui & Aoud, 2015). Another important factor that influences a social behavior is observational learning (Bandura, 2008). It is a process where an individual acquires attitudes or behaviors simply by observing others. People take the attitudes that they hear others express or the behavior they observe through the mechanism of social comparison. We tend to compare ourselves with others in order to determine correctness of our view of social reality. People adjust their attitudes so as to hold views closer to those of others who they value and identify with—their reference groups (Baron & Branscombe, 2014). In the observational learning, an individual has an opportunity to observe the sequential decisions and choices made by others who acted earlier without knowing the information what others possess (Frank & Schvaneveldt, 2016). They imitate the behavior of panic buying with an assumption that majority has a better assessment of the situation. Social trust is an important aspect that helps to facilitate mutual coordination and cooperation especially during the recovery from disaster (Quinn, 2006). The trust to community and government would be an important aspect to determine the panic buying. A high level of trust to society and government would indicate that the members of society would be cooperative and considerate by not hoarding the required objects and sharing limited supplies with others. On the contrary, a high level of social distrust could cause them to act individualistically, fearing others to buy more than their share and leaving none for others. This triggers panic buying (Yuen et al., 2020). Heuristics is the method of problem-solving where simple rules of thumb are used to make complex decisions (Foulds, 1983). People are capable of dealing with certain amount of information at a given time and reach cognitive overload when the demands are greater than the capacity in the cognitive system. There is the use of heuristics usually under the conditions where inferences are drawn in rapid manner. Availability heuristics help explain panic buying. Availability heuristics suggest that the easier it is to bring information to mind, the more frequent or important it is with

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greater impact on the subsequent judgment. The more people are seen buying impulsively the more fear is raised among public as has been the cases in the past (Baron, Branscombe, & Byrne, 2012). Conformity principles also help explain social psychology of panic buying. Conformity is the process of social influence where our behavior is modified in response to real or imagined pressure from others. Most people conform to the norms of their societies much of the time (Coleman, 2007). One of the key factors to influence conformity is cohesiveness. Cohesiveness is the extent of attachment to a particular social group and the desire to belong to it. If the value of membership in a particular group is high and the desire to be accepted by other group members is high, people do things as done by majority of the members. This helps win approval in a group. Hence, cohesiveness and the desire to be accepted are the factors that increase our tendency to conform (Chang, 2010; Morgan & Laland, 2012). Also, up to a certain point the size of majority also influences the conformity, i.e., as the size increases the tendency to conform also increases (Bordens & Horowitz, 2013). Even in the face of contrary evidence people conform to social norms. Although the government had declared that there is sufficient supplies of toilet papers, people were busy hoarding it in the context of panic buying during COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the answers that justify our social behavior of conformity are: basic human behavior to be liked and accepted by others and the desire to have accurate understanding of the social world. The most effective way to be likeable in social scenario is to behave as others do and agree with people around them. Also, action and opinion of other people define social reality for us, which we use as a guide for our own behavior and opinion (Baron et al., 2012). Rumor is derived from Latin meaning sound, voice, or gossip. In social, economic, political, cultural, and scientific communication, rumors are the news that is supposed to be and is communicated without being confirmed (Crescimbene, La Longa, & Lanza, 2012). Allport and Postman have described the three processes involved in the transmission of rumors: levelling, sharpening, and assimilation. Levelling means the rumor quickly becomes shorter, less detailed, and less complex. Sharpening means that certain parts of the rumor are selectively exaggerated and assimilation means the distortion of rumor as per the people’s preexisting prejudices, partialities, interests, and agendas (Tasnim, Hossain, & Mazumder, 2020). The anxiety level of the one hearing the rumor determines the distortion and transmission of rumors. Uncertainty and ambiguity increase anxiety and stress, and people try to look for the information that help them rationalize their anxiety. This leads to transmission of rumor. If the people approach the rumor with a critical orientation, it becomes refined or precise and if they approach it with uncritical orientation it becomes distorted (Vaughan & Hogg, 2013). This is very pertinent to the panic buying. Another important theory to explain the panic buying is herd mentality, which is defined as an alignment of thoughts and/or behaviors of individuals in a group, that emerges without purposeful coordination by a central authority or leading figure,

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and instead through local interactions among agents (Kameda & Hastie, 2015). At the time of stressful situations like COVID-19 pandemic, herd mentality manifests itself as panic buying in different sectors creating misallocation of assets, hike in pricing, abnormal purchases (Dang & Lin, 2016). Consumers may also experience a sense of comfort in both the possession of products perceived as important leading to socially encouraged nature of such behaviors (Jeffrey & Putman, 2013). Herd mentality is driven by innate vulnerability factors, including intolerance of uncertainty, and loss of control, whereby possession of a threatened consumer good restores a sense of security, comfort, and preparedness (Loxton et al., 2020). The phenomenon of panic buying can also be explained on the basis of Nash Equilibrium (Holt & Roth, 2004). During a pandemic, if everyone acts normally, we have an equilibrium: there will be goods in the shop shelves, and people can be relaxed and buy them as per their need. But if others start to panic buy, the optimal strategy for a person is to do the same. If one does not start buying he/she will be left without goods. Everyone in the society faces the same strategies and pay-offs, so each member will start to panic buy the items. The result is another equilibrium where everyone panic buys. So, either no one panic buys which is an example of a successful coordination or everyone is involved in panic buying which is a coordination failure (Paloyo, 2020; Wang, Gong, Tao, Zhang, & Zhao, 2013). While talking about the social psychological theories of panic buying role of media in this digital world cannot be ignored. Online devices and platforms have increased insecurity among people making them more uncertain regarding which information is correct and which one is incorrect (Koistinen & Järvinen, 2016; Tasnim et al., 2020. A study by Naeem suggests there are various subthemes through which social media generates social proof and offers a window into people’s collective response to any disaster and helps in shaping the panic buying reaction. The subthemes found in the study were uncertainty and insecurities proof, buying as a persuasion, product uncertainty proof, authorities’ communication, global logic, and expert opinion (Naeem, 2021). It has been seen that consumers tend to mimic others who are physically and virtually (online) influential, and their social media posts can play a significant role in the proliferation of mimicking the purchase behaviors (Zheng, Shou, & Yang, 2020). A study on online media portrayal of panic buying showed that maximum number of reports were related to the recent COVID-19 pandemic (95%) and the remaining reports were from disasters and economic events (1%) and very few (