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The purpose of this paper was to identify social and behavioral factors responsible for panic buying during global pandemics such as COVID-19.

According to regulatory focus theory, behavior of individuals is regulated by two motivational systems – prevention and promotion. Prevention-focused behavior is motivated by security and safety needs and is associated with a strategic preference for vigilant means of goal pursuit. Prevention-focused vigilance is reflected in unwillingness to take risks and low ability to cope with uncertain environments and changing conditions. Promotion-focused behavior is motivated by growth and self-development needs and is associated with a strategic preference for eager means of goal pursuit. Promotion-focused eagerness is reflected in willingness to take risks and high ability to cope with uncertainty and change. Two studies tested the notion that panic buying during public health crises such as COVID-19 is related to the strength of the prevention system, perceived scarcity of products, perceived threat of the disease, age and gender.

Study 1 showed that the higher the perceived scarcity of products, the higher was the probability that panic buying would set in. Yet, different patterns emerged for men and women. Among women, the stronger the prevention focus, the stronger was the effect. Among men, by contrast, the stronger the prevention focus, the weaker was the effect. Study 2 showed that the higher the perceived threat of the disease, the higher was the probability that panic buying would occur. However, different patterns were observed with age. Among older adults, the stronger the prevention focus, the stronger was the effect. Among young adults, by contrast, the stronger the prevention focus, the weaker was the effect.

Implications to address erratic consumer behavior during future pandemics are discussed.

By applying the theory of regulatory focus to consumer marketing, this research helps to identify marketing strategies to manage panic buying and develop contingency plans that address erratic consumer behavior during future pandemics.

Purpose: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus began to develop a national policy on reproductive health, influenced by late Soviet policy, market relations, and international actors. The central question of this research is how the issues of reproduction and woman’s health are reconsidered in post-Soviet Belarus, in light of the influence of various social and political factors.

Methodology/approach: This chapter critically examines discourses of legal regulations of reproduction and how they promote certain understandings of national security and traditional values through reproduction. In particular, the study is based on the discourse-analysis of the official legislative documents on reproduction in Belarus between 1991 and 2015.

Findings: The transformation of the post-Soviet social protection system, reproductive health care, family policy, as well as specific configuration of public discourse legitimize one model (unified and homogenized normative body that is heterosexual, fertile, healthy, prosperous) and exclude others (non-normative bodies that are non-heterosexual, infertile, unhealthy, poor, and thus precarious for the nation) in favor of the interests of biopolitical governance, nation-building, and neoliberal ideology. Moreover, legal documents legalize new principles of social stratification and produce new ideas about responsible parenthood.

Social implications: Although there is some scholarship on reproduction in Belarus, a thorough analysis of the public discourse and the legal regulations of reproduction has yet to be conducted. Contributing to the debate about post-Soviet reproductive politics, this chapter explores the influence of the biopolitical dialogue and the panic around depopulation on social policies. In particular, this chapter offers more critical perspective toward the economic and social dynamics in Belarus, taking into account the variety of processes and configurations of discourses that influence official policy.

Purpose/approach: This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.

Research implications: The chapters in this volume present original research employing empirical and textual methods illustrating the complex responses and policy challenges posed by contemporary understandings and misunderstandings of the nature of gender. Various forms of gender panic and responses to it within individuals, institutions, national states, and the world society are explored.

Practical and social implications: Research demonstrates that gender panic can lead to potentially harmful reactions and fruitless policies that reinforce rather than dismantle the gender binary, thereby, impacting vulnerable members of societies.

Value of the chapter: The chapter and the volume are intended to illustrate the nature of current gender panics and related policies and to encourage further scholarship with the goal of promoting greater understanding as well as developing constructive solutions to issues raised.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the stigma surrounding old age, which in many ways has increased rather than decreased with the ageing of the population.

The approach of this paper is to introduce the reader to recent writing and research surrounding talk of a “demograhic time bomb”, with the ageing of populations world wide. It also looks back on the work on “ageing studies” over the last two decades, revealing the prevailing disavowals of old age among the old themselves, as well as the contrasting gendered dynamics of the ways in which we are, as Margaret Gullette writes, “aged by culture”.

–The author introduces the conceptual notion of “temporal vertigo” to the complicated effects of the multiplicity of continuities and discontinuities older people experience when reflecting upon who they are over a lifetime. Ageing is of interest for those who have always been sceptical about any notion of the “true self”, allowing us to puzzle over how the account the old give of themselves will rely upon their ability to incorporate differing versions of the self, woven into the volatilities of memory and fantasy.

The paper's exploration of the radical ambiguities in the representation and discussions surrounding old age in these times.

Structural factors are central to demographic theories in trying to explain the ups and downs in fertility. In scientific debates two perspectives have often been confronted, one in which the economy is seen as the driving force of change, the other in which culture and new ideas are emphasised. Whether changes in the value of children are driven by economic or cultural factors can be difficult to disentangle. The theory of the demographic transition is a starting point.

The present study operationalizes and tests the impact of extrinsic (store environment, promotional activities) and intrinsic (hedonism, materialism) variables on impulsive buying during the COVID-19 period. It also considers the dual-factor approach (panic and impulsive buying tendency) using the “Stimulus-Organism-Response” approach and “Dual-Factor Theory”.

Purposive sampling was used to obtain data from 362 responses from retail shoppers and analyzed by path analysis. The moderation of novel constructs (scarcity and COVID-19 pandemic) examines the backdrop of retail impulse shopping.

The store environment has a detrimental effect on panic and impulsive buying. Promotional activities have a beneficial effect on impulsive buying tendency. Similarly, hedonism and materialism have a substantial positive effect on panic and impulsive buying tendencies. Between stimulus (intrinsic and extrinsic) and response variables, organism factors (panic and impulsive buying inclinations) influenced positively (impulsive buying); in terms of moderation, scarcity and the COVID-19 pandemic exhibit substantial moderation between organism and response.

The results contribute substantially to the existing domain of customers’ panic and impulsive purchasing behavior for the scarcity of essential items during the COVID-19 epidemic. Research in this field is limited, varied and inconclusive. New insights were obtained as this research blends the “Stimulus-Organism-Response” and Dual factor theories.

Despite the abundant literature on panic buying during COVID-19 pandemic, the several causes and consequences of panic buying have been enormously ignored. The purpose of this study is to emphasize the consumer’s behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and illustrate the comprehensive theoretical model of consumers’ panic buying to investigate its causes and consequences in a developing country empirically to uncover this gap.

The authors collected data from 419 households of all socioeconomic classes of Bangladesh. A hierarchical regression model analyzed the data.

This study finds that internal and external factors such as rumors, government strategies, fear and anxiety and health security significantly affect consumers’ panic buying behaviors. This finding supports some theories of human behavior. This study also finds that panic buying has internal and external consequences such as price hike, shortage of supply of products, dissatisfaction of consumers and increase in utility (benefit) of the products but not on consumer’s budget. This finding supports as well as contradicts some established theories of human and consumer behavior.

This study proves that panic buying cannot help the consumers and they are the ultimate sufferers of this. The findings of this study will help the government, media, suppliers and consumers to interact properly to maintain panic buying during a pandemic crisis. Giving a holistic explanation of the causes and consequences of panic buying by introducing some novel variables is a momentous strength of this study.

The COVID-19 outbreak has been effectively controlled in China, but the resulting public psychological crisis is a latent, persistent and torturous disaster. This crisis affects not only the individual’s health but also social stability. This study aims to reveal the structure and situation of public psychological crisis during the remission period of the COVID-19 epidemic.

A questionnaire survey of the psychological crisis was conducted from February to May 2021. Data was collected from 1,056 respondents from different provinces in China.

The findings reveal the dangerous risks of public psychological crises. The specific results are as follows: first, a hierarchical state structure of psychological crisis is constructed and characterized as a significant gradient decline, namely, anxious state>panic state>depressive state>hostile state. Second, 43.939% of respondents reported an anxious state, 46.780% reported a panic state, 40.909% reported a depressive state, 28.883% reported a hostile state and 22.254% of the respondents had four psychological crisis states. Third, those with 56–65 years of age, equal or below high school and PhD, with monthly family incomes of ¥50,000–¥100,000 and living in the county and city areas have relatively high levels of psychological crisis.

This study enriches the research on the evolution of the psychological crisis in terms of structure and periods. This study also provides substantial evidence for hierarchical intervention and differentiated intervention of psychological crisis.

This paper aims to identify factors that influence customers' panic buying behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 357 participants in Fiji, and structural equation modeling to analyze the collected data.

Results indicate that expected personal outcomes is positively associated with customers' attitudes while expected community-related outcomes negatively impact customers' attitudes. Factors such as attitude, subjective norms, scarcity, time pressure and perceived competition were found to positively influence customers' panic buying intention. Furthermore, scarcity and time pressure were confirmed to positively influence perceived competitiveness while perceived social detection risk negatively influences customer's panic buying intention.

The findings highlight the need for better measures to ensure that every customer has access to goods and services and is not deprived of such necessities in times of a crisis. These results will assist store managers and policymakers in introducing better management, social policies and resource utilization mechanisms to mitigate panic buying during the pandemic.

This study's findings contribute to the literature on customer's panic buying behavior during a global pandemic. Research in this area remain scarce, inconsistent and inconclusive. Novel insights are generated as this study is the first to combine the theory of planned behavior, privacy calculus theory and protection motivation theory. Applying these theories allows new relationships to be tested to better understand customer behavior during a global pandemic. With most studies on customer behavior during crises and disasters in developed countries, this study generates new insights by exploring customer behavior in a developing country.

Extant research indicates that fear of missing out (FoMO) caused by the negative influence of media and word-of-mouth (WOM) leads to panic buying and generates a negative impact on consumer well-being. However, the mechanism that can minimise or abort this impact remains understudied. Therefore, in this study, we examine how consumer self-regulation functions as a brake mechanism to intervene with the negative influences of media and WOM on FoMO.

Data were collected from a representative sample in Australia. Hypotheses were tested by applying generalised structural equation modelling (GSEM), and analysis was conducted using the statistical software Stata 17.

Self-regulation is negatively influenced by media channels and WOM but is positively influenced by media content. Consumer self-regulation acts as a brake mechanism for FoMO. Panic buying, which is triggered by FoMO, has a significant impact on negative emotional well-being.

The limitations of the study are associated with the survey data collection.

We extend the knowledge of how self-regulation works as a brake mechanism for the complex FoMO construct consisting of a perception of missing out accompanied by irrational behaviours. Self-regulation emerges as a brake mechanism for FoMO. Hence, if self-regulation is practiced at the inception of the media and WOM exposure, it can counteract FoMO and potentially abort its’ impact on panic buying.

From a practical perspective, policymakers could help emotionally vulnerable individuals better engage in self-control practices through support programmes and workshops aimed at assisting the public in coping with overwhelming and intense adverse emotions experienced during and following various crises. Vulnerable cohorts, particularly the younger generation who are arguably more susceptible to FoMO, need to be studied more thoroughly in the marketing domain.

The role of self-regulation has been studied thinly in marketing literature, particularly in relation to offsetting irrational consumer behaviours. The originality of our study is that it extends and broadens the understanding of the role of self-regulation in the context of pandemics and addresses the inconclusive evidence of the impact of self-regulation on FoMO.