‘Panic buying’ might be a normal human response to uncertainty, after all. 

People around the world dramatically changed their shopping behaviours at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and it still happens even when there are new outbreak around Australia.

Faced with new uncertainty, shoppers began stocking up on basic household items – especially toilet paper – to account for the new unknown. This buying frenzy led to shortages, even though, in most cases, there would have been enough to go around if people only purchased what they needed. 

According to a study led by UNSW Sydney, reactive behaviour like this isn’t unusual, but a common way to handle unexpected uncertainty. 

In fact, unexpected uncertainty is such a powerful motivator for change that it often prompts us to adjust our behaviour – even when it’s not good for us.

“When people experience an unexpected change in their environment, they start looking for ways to lessen that uncertainty,” says lead author of the study Dr Adrian Walker, who completed this research as part of his PhD in psychology at UNSW Science. “They can change their behaviour and decision-making strategies to try and find a way to regain some sense of control.

“Surprisingly, our study found that unexpected uncertainty caused people to change their behaviours even when they would have been better off sticking to an old strategy.” 

The behavioural study is the first to show the type of uncertainty we experience – that is, whether it is expected or unexpected – plays a key role in our reaction.

For example, a city worker who knows their morning commute takes anywhere from 30 to 50 minutes wouldn’t be surprised by a 50-minute trip. On the other hand, a country driver would be very surprised if their predictable 30-minute trip suddenly took 50 minutes.

To test how people respond to unexpected change, the researchers tasked study participants with selling a pair of objects to one of two subjects – in this scenario, aliens – in a virtual simulation. Their task was simple: get as many points (or ‘alien dollars’) as possible.

Participants needed to choose which alien to sell a pair of chemicals to, but only one of the chemicals determined how much the alien would pay. They needed to work out which chemical and alien combination would earn them the greatest rewards.

An initial group of 35 participants were familiarised with the task and quickly learnt that one strategy (say, Option A) gave the better offer of 15 points. But midway through the experiment, the reward pattern changed, and Option A now gave a random number between 8 and 22 points. 

“As soon as we added an element of uncertainty, the participants started looking for new ways to complete the task,” says Dr Walker. “The kicker is that in all cases, the best thing they could do was use their old strategy.”

Dr Walker says the pandemic – and our different responses to it – is a large-scale example of unexpected uncertainty.

“Everything changed very suddenly at the start of COVID-19,” he says. 

“Many of us were suddenly all working from home, changing how we shop, and changing how we socialise. The rules we were living by beforehand no longer applied, and there was – and still is – no clear answer about when or how the pandemic will end.

“Different people tried all sorts of things – like panic shopping – to reduce this new uncertainty and return to ‘normal’. But as we’ve seen, not all of these reactive strategies were good in the long run.”

What do you think causes the phenomenon of panic buying during COVID outbreaks? Do you expect this behaviour to stop at some point?