The fear of falling short: An empirical investigation of drivers and consequences of hoarding

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a remarkable consumer behavior was reported by media in multiple countries: shoppers started to hoard products like toilet paper. This unconventional amassing of products out of fear they might become unavailable, has been conceptualized in previous literature, however, empirical evidence of this behavior is lacking. In this project, we analyze household panel data from multiple European countries to sketch the complete hoarding picture. In a first subproject, we investigate the drivers of hoarding by disentangling the effects of COVID-19 figures and different government policy measures. Moreover, we identify which categories were hoarded by which consumers, thereby laying the groundwork for our further research on the consequences of hoarding. Our second subproject focuses on the consequences manifested in households’ shopping behavior. Specifically, we analyze how product and store attribute preferences changed for hoarded categories during hoarding episodes and how this shift is moderated by consumer characteristics. Finally, our third subproject looks at anti-hoarding policy measures and their (unintended) impact on non-hoarded categories in terms of consumer welfare, and how this impact varies across households with different sociographic characteristics.