Abstract
Panic buying is commonly seen as a consequence of a difficult disaster situation. In a pandemic like COVID-19, consumers tend to stockpile staples and other essential items that they perceive may help them sustain themselves through the crisis period and in anticipation of supply shortages. It may create panic, insecurity, anxiety, and a sense of fear among the vulnerable. Panic buying is a bigger issue than it looks, as stockpiling of commodities can cause supply–demand disruption, item shortages, and price hikes of concerned items. Panic buying is not a simple phenomenon to understand; it depends upon several factors, including the behavioral phenomenon, supply chain management, economy, sociology, geology, public, political administration, disaster and emergency management, and the role of media. 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 an individual or group. Hence, it is important to fully understand how we can predict consumer panic buying behavior, which may help with the mitigation policy. Here, we propose a classification of external and internal predictors based on whether they work on a group level or individual level.
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Singh, J., Kumar, P., Kar, S.K. (2021). Predictors of Panic Buying. In: Arafat, S.Y., Kumar Kar, S., Kabir, R. (eds) Panic Buying. SpringerBriefs in Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70726-2_2
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