Panic Buying During Lockdowns Is More Rational Than You Think

The Psychology of Toilet Paper

On a Tuesday morning in March 2020, a woman in Wuhan bought 50 packs of instant noodles. By Friday, she had added 30 cans of pork, 15 bags of rice, and enough cooking oil to deep-fry a small car. News crews filmed empty shelves. The internet called it panic buying. But when economists H. H. Wang and Na Hao analyzed the behavior of 1,200 urban consumers across three Chinese cities during that same lockdown period, they found something the headlines missed: a lot of that hoarding was perfectly logical.

The paper, published in 2020, is blunt about it. "Food hoarding is prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic," they write. But the word "prevalent" hides a split. Some people were hoarding because they were scared and following the herd. Others were hoarding because they had done the math and decided it made sense. The difference between those two groups is the difference between panic and preparation. And the researchers found a way to tell them apart.

What Makes a Hoarder Rational?

Wang and Hao designed their study around a simple question: Are people stockpiling food because they are irrational, or because the situation actually demands it? To find out, they surveyed consumers in three Chinese cities that had experienced lockdowns: Wuhan, Shanghai, and Beijing. The cities differed in lockdown severity, infection rates, and local food supply. The researchers asked about the amount of food people already had at home, their expectations about the virus, their mood, and whether they felt pressure from neighbors or friends to stock up.

The results split cleanly along two axes. One axis was rational: the amount of food you already had, and your estimate of how likely you were to get infected. The other was irrational: bad mood and herd psychology.

Here is what that means in practice. If you already had a week of food in your pantry and you lived in a low infection area, buying more was probably irrational. But if you had two days of food left and the infection rate in your neighborhood was climbing, buying extra was not panic. It was risk management. The authors found that "the amount of food at hand and the expectation on the infection possibility of COVID-19 are two major factors affecting rational hoarding" (Wang & Hao, 2020). That is a direct quote from the abstract, and it is worth sitting with. The researchers are saying that rational hoarding is not a contradiction in terms. It is a predictable response to a real shortage risk.

The irrational side was driven by two things: feeling bad and following the crowd. "Bad mood and herd psychology are factors contributing to panic buying," the authors write. If you were already anxious or depressed, you were more likely to buy without a clear reason. If you saw your neighbors loading up their carts, you were more likely to do the same, even if your own supply was fine.

The Numbers Behind the Behavior

The study used a multivariate probit model, which is a statistical tool for analyzing multiple yes/no decisions at once. The sample was random and online, which means it captured people who were actually living through lockdowns, not people remembering them later. The researchers measured not just whether people hoarded, but why they said they did.

The key finding was that both rational and irrational motives were at work simultaneously. That might sound obvious, but it matters because it changes how you interpret the behavior. If you assume all hoarding is irrational, you design policies that treat everyone like a child. You limit purchases per person, you shame people on social media, you assume the problem is a failure of reason. But if you accept that some hoarding is rational, you have to ask a different question: What would make rational people stop?

What the Study Does Not Prove

The study has limits. It was conducted in three Chinese cities, all with strong state capacity and centralized food distribution. The results might not translate to a country with a different grocery system, different cultural norms around food storage, or a less reliable supply chain. The researchers also relied on self reported behavior, which is always tricky. People might not remember exactly how much they bought, or they might underreport irrational motives because they do not want to seem foolish.

There is a deeper open question here too. The researchers distinguish between rational and irrational hoarding, but the line is blurry. If you buy extra food because you are anxious about the news, is that irrational? Or is it a rational response to information that the system might fail? The study defines rationality narrowly: it is about matching your buying to your current supply and infection risk. But in a pandemic, the information itself is uncertain. What looks like herd psychology might actually be a rational bet that other people know something you do not.

The Policy Implications Are Not What You Think

If you are a government official trying to stop panic buying, the study suggests two different strategies for two different problems. For irrational hoarding, you need to calm people down. That means public messaging that addresses anxiety directly, not just facts about supply. It means showing images of full shelves, not empty ones. It means acknowledging fear rather than dismissing it.

For rational hoarding, you need to fix the actual supply problem. If people are buying extra because they do not trust the stores to restock, the only solution is to prove that restocking will happen. That means visible supply chains, predictable delivery schedules, and clear communication about when and how food will arrive. You cannot shame people out of a rational calculation.

The study also found that herd psychology was a significant driver of irrational buying. That is not surprising, but it is actionable. If you can break the visual signal of people hoarding, you can reduce the pressure to follow. That is why some stores started limiting purchases not just to stop hoarding, but to stop the appearance of hoarding. An empty shelf signals scarcity. A shelf with a sign saying "limit 2 per customer" signals control.

What This Actually Means

• ▸If you have enough food for two weeks and you are buying more, ask yourself whether you are responding to your actual supply or to what you saw on social media. The difference matters.
• ▸Governments should not assume all hoarding is panic. Some of it is a rational response to uncertainty about supply. The fix for that is not messaging, it is logistics.
• ▸Herd psychology is contagious in a literal sense. If you see empty shelves, you are more likely to buy more, which empties more shelves. Breaking that cycle requires visible action, not just words.
• ▸Bad mood amplifies irrational buying. If you are already anxious or depressed, you are more vulnerable to hoarding impulses. That is not a character flaw, it is a psychological fact that policy should account for.
• ▸The rational hoarders are not the problem. They are responding to real risk. The irrational hoarders are the problem, and they need calm, not shame.

The study by Wang and Hao is not a defense of panic buying. It is a defense of nuance. In a crisis, some people are losing their minds, and some people are just trying to feed their families. The difference is not always visible from the outside. But it matters for how you respond.