Irrational Consumption during the COVID-19 Period.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the world economy and has, most presumably, exerted a great deal of stress on citizens, in turn leading to the call for timely assessments of how this period might actually impact individuals at the level of everyday well-being and in their behaviors such as consumer decisions. Through one pilot study and two online survey studies, we tentatively investigated this latter question, and demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic may increase perceived stress and impair individuals' sleep quality, which in turn impels their irrational consumption. This research provides preliminary evidence for the impact of the present pandemic on irrational consumption and contributes to the literature on stress and consumer behavior.

The Influence of COVID-19 on Irrational Consumption Behavior in a Chinese Sample: Based on a Serial Mediating Model.

Based on the scarcity theory, this study focuses on exploring the relationship between the severity of public health emergencies (i.e., COVID-19) and individual irrational consumer behaviors through the serial mediating variables of perceived scarcity (PS) and negative mentality (NM). An online questionnaire was used to collect data from participants in China and we obtained 466 effective (115 male and 351 female) questionnaires in total. The findings showed that the relationship between each pair of factors - perceived pandemic severity, PS, NM, and irrational consumption behaviors - was significantly positive. Although the perception of the severity of this public health emergency did not directly predict irrational consumer behavior, the effect was mediated by PS and NM independently and serially. These findings reveal that people who strongly perceive scarcity and are prone to negative attitudes are more likely to demonstrate irrational consumer behaviors (such as rushing to buy and hoard living supplies) once the public perceives a public health emergency as severe. This effect occurs because the PS that results from the epidemic affects people's cognition, emotion, and behavior.

The closer I am, the safer I feel: The "distance proximity effect" of COVID-19 pandemic on individuals' risk assessment and irrational consumption.

The unprecedented crisis of COVID-19 posed severe negative consequences for consumers, marketers, and society at large. By investigating the effect of individuals' distance from the COVID-19 epicenter (i.e., the geographical area in which COVID-19 pandemic is currently most severe) on consumers' risk perception and subsequent behaviors, this research provides novel empirical findings that can offer practical insights for marketers. While intuitively, people expect individuals closer to the COVID-19 epicenter to generate a greater risk perception of the pandemic, empirical evidence from four studies provides consistent results for the opposite effect. We find that a closer (vs. farther) distance to the epicenter associates with lower (vs. higher) perceived risk of the pandemic, leading to less (vs. more) irrational consumption behaviors. We refer to this phenomenon as the "distance proximity effect," which holds for both physical and psychological distances. We further demonstrated that this effect is mediated by consumers' perception of uncertainty and moderated by individuals' risk aversion tendency. The current research contributes to the literature of consumers' risk perception and irrational consumption by highlighting a novel factor of distance proximity. It also offers some timely insights into managing and intervening COVID-19 related issues inside and outside an epicenter.