{"id":72684,"date":"2024-08-13T10:25:11","date_gmt":"2024-08-13T17:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=72684"},"modified":"2024-08-13T10:25:11","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T17:25:11","slug":"weather-consumption-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/weather-consumption-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Bought too much toilet paper before that winter storm? Here\u2019s why"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, as Typhoon Gaemi edged closer to Taiwan\u2019s shores, <\/span>Cony Ho <\/span><\/b>shook his head in dismay as he read the same familiar headlines: \u201cSupermarket shelves left bare as typhoon approaches.\u201d \u201cAhead of Gaemi\u2019s landfall, customers buy up milk, instant noodles.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story we\u2019ve all heard before: When winter storms, hurricanes, heat waves and other disasters threaten to wreak havoc on a community, its citizens rush to stores to buy food and supplies\u2026in bulk…that they don\u2019t end up needing. The panic-buying causes a shortage that didn\u2019t need to happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why do so many consumers purchase far more than they need during weather emergencies, causing stores to run out of products before everyone has a chance to stock up? Ho, an assistant professor of marketing and business analytics at Northern Arizona University, recently led a series of five studies to find out why\u2014and to find a solution to the problem. He worked with <\/span>Steven Liu<\/span><\/b>, sales program director and an assistant professor at NAU, and two other researchers based in Taiwan, Kuan-Chou Ko and Chun-Chieh Wu.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know the climate is changing; every year, we see more and more weather-related disasters,\u201d Ho said. \u201cSo we urgently need to understand why when people expect extreme weather, they tend to stockpile a month\u2019s worth of things, even if the weather event will probably only keep them isolated in their homes for two or three days. Not only that, but we need to find a way to prevent people from stockpiling so there\u2019s enough supply for everyone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The five studies, <\/span>published in a paper this month in the Journal of Product and Brand Management<\/span><\/a>, found that people tend to stockpile because they overestimate how scarce products will become in an emergency. The solution to allaying their fears, Ho and his co-authors found, is simple: Send reassuring messages that there\u2019s more than enough supply to go around.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"empty<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Why we stockpile<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Ho said that he and his colleagues started with a historical set of instant noodle sales data from Taiwan. The researchers\u2019 analysis showed that sales always increased exponentially whenever the Taiwanese government issued a typhoon warning, which tends to happen a handful of times each year.\u202f<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat gave us direct evidence that when extreme weather is on the way, Taiwanese people tend to stockpile instant noodles,\u201d Ho said. \u201cSo then our question was, why? What\u2019s the psychology behind this change in behavior?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers then conducted two behavioral experiments. They asked 200 online participants to read fake news coverage about an upcoming weather event, giving half of participants news about a major looming storm and the other half news about normal seasonal conditions ahead. They asked the participants to share what amounts of perishable and non-perishable goods they planned to buy in advance, then they asked the participants to select what they would buy and predict how scarce the products would become. What they found, Ho said, was that the participants who were planning for a major storm significantly overestimated the scarcity of every product and overwhelmingly planned to stockpile non-perishable goods.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat study revealed that people overconsume whenever they perceive that there will be\u202f scarcity,\u201d Ho said.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the fourth study, the researchers began to search for solutions to people\u2019s habit of overconsuming. More than 150 online participants read fake news coverage about an impending storm where an expert declared the community \u201cwill probably be out of food and other necessities.\u201d Another 150 participants received fake news coverage that said the governor had \u201cprepared abundant food and necessary goods.\u201d A survey asked the participants how willing they were to buy things like noodles and water and how much they would buy\u2014and the first group chose to buy much more.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we directly told participants, \u2018You don\u2019t have to worry about scarcity; we will provide enough food and water,\u2019 we found people were less likely to stockpile products,\u201d Ho said.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Those findings offer a lesson to policymakers and civil servants, Ho said: In advance of emergencies, secure the supplies people need and reassure them there\u2019s enough for everyone. It\u2019s a tactic many leaders learned during the COVID-19 pandemic: They watched citizens clear store shelves to stock up on toilet paper, cleaning supplies and masks, then they eased inventory issues by offering people free supplies.\u202f<\/span><\/p>\n

\"closeup<\/a><\/p>\n

The role of altruism<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

The fifth and final study delivered yet another lesson to policymakers. Ho and his colleagues repeated the third study in the United Kingdom and added another element: an altruism assessment. After participants read fake weather reports and answered questions about stockpiling, they filled out a survey asking whether they have helped carry a stranger\u2019s belongings or let a neighbor borrow their valuable belongings.\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers found that those who showed more altruism were less likely to stockpile, even in the event of a major disaster.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who stockpile might not be thinking of other people\u2019s needs,\u201d Ho said. \u201cBut if we can draw their attention to other people who need the same supplies, maybe through awareness campaigns or slogans, they\u2019ll purchase less. They\u2019ll feel good thinking, \u2018Oh, I can help society, I can help other people.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Promoting altruism is one potential solution to the stockpiling problem, Ho said. Another, suggested by psychologist colleagues, is to use facts to remove their biases.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cImagine what would happen if we could ask consumers to realistically estimate how many days they\u2019ll be inconvenienced by a winter storm,\u201d Ho said. \u201cIf most people thought about it, they would estimate two, maybe three days. It would draw attention to the fact that they don\u2019t really need a month\u2019s supply of noodles.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Along with policymakers and consumers, Ho hopes the five studies help open the door to more research on the connections between extreme weather and the consumption of so-called \u201cfast-moving consumer goods\u201d\u2014cheap and frequently purchased items like groceries and toilet paper.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis area hasn\u2019t been investigated much, even though we have all experienced it,\u201d Ho said. \u201cYou see these things on the news and you can imagine what\u2019s going through people\u2019s heads. We can explain the behavior, but we don\u2019t think about the solutions. We need to start thinking more about how to solve problems that come up again and again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJill Kimball | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, as Typhoon Gaemi edged closer to Taiwan\u2019s shores, Cony Ho shook his head in dismay as he read the same familiar headlines: \u201cSupermarket shelves left bare as typhoon approaches.\u201d \u201cAhead of Gaemi\u2019s landfall, customers buy up milk, instant noodles.\u201d It\u2019s a story we\u2019ve all heard before: When winter storms, hurricanes, heat waves and…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":72686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}