How reducing ‘just in case’ purchases can help avoid empty shelves and fuel bowsers

If you’ve topped up your tank at a petrol station recently, did it feel like you were “panic buying”? Or did it feel more like “I’d better buy some, just in case”?

During the COVID pandemic, our research team wrote about the psychological drivers behind Australians buying up toilet paper: scarcity mindset, anticipated regret and regaining “control”. We also warned that politicians or media coverage rebuking people for buying more at the supermarkets actually risked making it worse.

Over recent weeks, some senior politicians have repeated this mistake, berating people as “un-Australian” for “panic buying” fuel.

But one of the lessons we should have learnt from COVID – when supermarket shelves were cleared and some buying limits had to be introduced – is that most people didn’t perceive themselves as “panic buyers”.

‘Just in case’ shoppers

A 2020 survey asked 450 people in the United States and Australia “to what extent did you engage in panic buying in the first few months of the COVID-19 outbreak?”. On average, both the older US participants and mostly university-aged Australians participants scored themselves as only having “low engagement” in panic buying.

A smaller UK study published in 2022 found similar results, concluding “‘panic buying’ is not a useful concept”.

Instead, Australian and other shoppers during COVID saw buying a bit extra as playing it safe, rather than panicking.

Many Australians have lingering memories of times when supply has struggled to meet demand: from banana prices jumping from A$2 a kilogram to $15 a kilo after Cyclone Larry in 2006, to struggling to find eggs last year due to bird flu.

With little sign of the Strait of Hormuz being safe for oil tankers anytime soon, it’s entirely rational for people to think “I’d better get petrol now, before the price jumps further” – sooner than we might have refilled normally.

But when enough people buy more “just in case”, all those individual choices can collectively overwhelm our fuel and food systems.

Read more: Panic buying just makes shortages worse. Why do people do it anyway?

‘A few extras’ can empty shelves

Australia has spent decades pursuing lean supply chains – what’s known as “just-in-time” supplies, with minimal buffer stock sitting around in warehouses.

It’s a hyper-efficient system that uses sophisticated demand forecasting to keep costs low. But it also assumes that tomorrow will look exactly like today.

Supply chains here and in many other countries are now optimised for predictable demand, rather than surges in demand.

In March 2020, market research group Kantar analysed the shopping habits of more than 100,000 UK consumers. It found only a small minority of people were buying far more than usual. For instance, only 3% of shoppers were stockpiling far more packets of pasta than usual.

But a significant number of consumers were adding just a few extra products and shopping more often than usual. Kantar concluded those “just a few extras” shoppers were inadvertently emptying shelves.

For our supply systems to keep working today, we need to resist the instinct to buy more fuel or other essentials than usual – unless there’s a genuine need, like residents in Queensland and the Northern Territory needing supplies before Cyclone Narelle hit.

Buying just what you need

Our work in behavioural theory suggests two approaches that would help Australia avoid repeating some of the mistakes of the early COVID response.

First, we need to highlight what the majority are doing. Focusing on the minority – those emptying shelves of jerry cans at Bunnings – can accidentally create a powerful, negative social norm that can amplify hoarding behaviour.

Most Australians are still buying petrol and shopping as normal. Highlighting sensible behaviour normalises and stabilises it.