I caught the Blog-article from Clare Sibthorpe of Sky News, which included comments from psychologists explaining the empty supermarket shelves as the result of ‘panic’ buying; see https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-why-are-people-panic-buying-and-why-toilet-paper-11952397.
I thought that I could add to the discussion with a few thoughts of my own (set out below), which offer an alternative explanation for the ‘herd-behaviour’.
Unfortunately, the behaviour of hoarding is not a ‘panic’ reaction, nor is it irrational; once a resource is seen as scarce or in danger of becoming scarce, the natural human-impulse is to hoard it; store it away for leaner times ahead. This is rational because any resource becomes more valuable either in monetary terms e.g. gold, or in existential terms e.g. food or water, as it becomes more scarce (or is perceived as becoming more scarce).
Food and drink are resources that we consume, but from that consumption we also produce waste. Dealing with that waste also involves using resources, some of which are psychologically distant e.g. landfill sites (cemeteries?)and some of which are proximate e.g. hygiene products (including toilet paper). These ‘exit-resources’ will become increasingly valuable (in monetary and psychological terms) and lead to people attempting to hoard and stock-pile accordingly.
Another way of looking at the ‘panic’-buying is through the lens of Hardin’s model “Tragedy of the Commons”.
This model sets out a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action. The original ‘commons’ is common pasture, upon which a number of families graze one cow each. The pasture is a free resource benefiting everyone until one family decides an extra cow “wouldn’t hurt anyone”. The neighbours immediately see this as being unfair and set about restoring the ‘equitable’ balance by introducing extra cows of their own, and some try to ‘get-ahead’ by introducing 2 or more extra cattle. Thus a competitive ‘cow-race’ develops resulting in the over-grazing of the pasture and its eventual demise, (also leading to the death of all the cattle).
In the present environment of a pandemic, ‘commons’ can mean any shared and unregulated resource such as food & drink items or soap or toilet rolls. Experiments in the 1960’s and 70′ tested the Hardin model to see under what circumstances the tragedy could be averted. Appeals to the ‘better-side’ of human nature (moral and ethical arguments) were tried, and the effect of financial contingencies on decision-making explored. However, the only system to save the commons was a set of strictly enforced rules & regulations!
We should be careful to guard against a future situation where ‘commons’ becomes an actual physical space where individuals and families can maintain a healthy ‘social-distance’. It is more than likely that people in possession of that valuable resource will want to protect it with fences and walls, and perhaps with behaviour selected from the human repertoire which is a lot less passive!
Dr N Marlow
19th March 2020