
In an online questionnaire in German and English, the scientists investigated to what extent the personal feeling of being threatened by the corona virus can explain whether people buy more toilet paper than they would normally do. At the same time, they looked at which personality factors could explain this. According to the results, the more critically they looked at their general health or work situation, the more people seemed to buy toilet paper. People who are very self-disciplined and orderly and plan well in advance also bought a lot of toilet paper during the critical phase of the corona crisis. People who tend to be particularly emotional also reacted with increased toilet paper consumption.
In addition, the researchers observed that older people hoard more toilet paper than younger people and Americans hoard more than Europeans. However, the researchers concede that their findings probably explain only 12 percent of the change in toilet paper purchasing behaviour and that some psychological explanations and situational factors were probably not taken into account. " Subjective threat of COVID-19 seems to be an important trigger for toilet paper stockpiling. However, we are still far away from understanding this phenomenon comprehensively," says Richard Rau.