Is “Panic Buying” a Myth?

[Author’s note: Yesterday, I discussed the liminal experience of crises, and how photography of depleted shelves is a way to make sense of the event. Today is a further focus on “panic buying” and its possible mischaracterization.]

The coverage of people’s shopping behaviors as the novel coronavirus makes its way onto the world’s stage has been extensive. Photos of empty shelves are followed with accusations of “panic buying.” Reports of the toilet paper shortage have been particularly extensive.

But is “panic buying” really what we are seeing most of the time? Even with shelves depleted, is this a productive way to talk about shopping behavior? I argue here that it is not, and is even detrimental to how we come to understand our response to this public health hazard.

Sociologists of disaster have long made a point that reports of hazard events are ripe with myths that propagate unhelpful and even dangerous descriptions of people’s behavior. Particularly problematic are those accounts that exaggerate misanthropy, or bad behavior. One of those disaster myths — that looting is an inevitable behavior from natural hazards — is one worth considering in relation to today’s “panic buying” trope. Though there is newer debate about how to empirically measure and characterize looting, there remains a sense that looting, if and when it happens, is over-reported and sometimes over-criminalized at the cost of important issues happening that also deserve attention and perhaps praise. Such readiness to mischaracterize propels the overall myth of the degradation of social order following disaster events.

For the COVID-19 event, the characterization of “panic buying” gives me pause. First, we must acknowledge that shopping is one of the most visible aspects of this event so far—we cannot see the hazard, unless we are in hospitals. There is no wind, no floodwater, no rubble to report. For many of us, the weather is lovely, and the streets are quiet. Netflix plays on. Shopping is the activity that is observable to our eyes and cameras; it is one of the few things happening in the public sphere. Of course shopping will become a focus, and we have to be careful that our eyes and cameras do not magnify one behavior over another in this pandemic response.

We also must ask, is it “panic buying” when…

… a nation listens to public health advisories to make sure each household has enough supplies for a couple of weeks?

… a household of people who spends 40 hours outside the home is now entirely inside the home?

… food and toiletries — including toilet paper — must now be directed to the household sector versus business and educational sectors?

The transformation to the home front as the primary place of work, education and leisure will necessarily have consequences on how we source the goods we need to make those places function for us. Stores are called such for a reason: we rely on them to store our goods so we don’t have to. Of course shelves will be depleted. The problem of depleted resources cannot only be that people are panic buying, it is also because we all had to shop for similar things at the same time.

So why is characterizing “buying” as “panic buying” a problem? It is because it:

1. Fails to acknowledge that the problem arose because of a synchronized, collective response — one that we otherwise want.
2. Makes the individual the hazard to manage. The focus needs to remain on the virus.
3. Minimizes how much effort is required to re-order the household as the primary place of all activity that occurs in society.
4. Ignores how much of life happens outside the home, and the goods needed for us to exist in and frequent other places.
5. Presumes that people have lots of goods on hand, and that everyone can afford to have large pantries chock full of food and toiletries.
6. Presumes that those goods can be acquired through online means, which are opportunities that are now closing rapidly in the US.
7. Presumes that we all know what to do in a pandemic, and we received information that was different than making sure we had supplies on hand.

In all other aspects of this pandemic, a synchronized response is the only way we will get through it. Of course shopping as an activity will then be problematically synchronized.

We will need empirical research to tell us how much shopping happened in surplus in light of the initial COVID-19 news, versus how much was a problem of everyone taking similar actions at the same time. How we move forward as the pandemic endures will tell the tale of how much real anxiety/panic is associated with acquiring goods.

Leysia Palen has been conducting crisis informatics research since 2004 as a Professor of Information Science and Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She and her research can be found at https://cmci.colorado.edu/~palen/.

This is the third article in a series on research and reflection during the novel coronavirus pandemic.