Jun 15, 2020 12:15:00

'Personality' of people who are easy to stock up toilet paper in an emergency is revealed

The new coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19) has spread, and

toilet paper has been bought up all over the world. Experts have so far cited the reasons for consumers to run into such hoarding behaviors, 'to regain their control in an emergency' and 'stress response.' And a new survey reveals that there is a tendency in the personality of people who tend to hoard.

Influence of perceived threat of Covid-19 and HEXACO personality traits on toilet paper stockpiling
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234232

Study: People who hoard toilet paper are just looking for a symbol of safety | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/study-people-who-hoard-toilet-paper-are-just-looking-for-a-symbol-of-safety/

While there is an idea that human psychological factors are involved in hoarding toilet paper, ``Toilet paper is larger than other supplies and the empty shelf stands out when it disappears It was just taken up as.' However, it is known that the demand increased by 700% in some regions.

Therefore, the German research team conducted a questionnaire survey via social media to 996 adults in 22 countries around the world. This survey is about the personality of a person and consists of questions about six categories: emotional, honesty, honesty/humility, extroversion, collaboration, and openness to experience. I will. At the same time, information on the subject's attributes, behavior during quarantine, how much COVID-19 was received as a threat, and the amount of toilet paper stock at the time of the survey and the amount of normal time were collected.

As a result, it was found that those who highly evaluated 'honesty' in the personality questionnaire were more likely to stock toilet paper. It has also been found that elderly people, who are at high risk of infection and have a high need for self-isolation, are more likely to stock toilet paper than younger people. In addition, the United States was shown to have a higher hoarding tendency than Europe.

The research team says that people who buy up toilet paper tend to have the image of 'selfish villains', but in reality they are just 'frightened people.' 'Even very humble and moral people will stockpile toilet paper if they feel a big threat from a pandemic.' 'Toilet paper is objective for work and life saving in a health crisis. It doesn't matter, but this study showed that toilet paper was acting as a 'subjective symbol of safety.'' In addition, the variability of the variables included in the analysis was only 12%, ``this fact indicates whether people are threatened with COVID-19 by psychological factors not included in the study, or risk management of regional authorities. It also means that it depends on external factors such as reliability.”