Consumer food stockpiling behavior and willingness to pay for food reserves in COVID-19
Open accessAbstract
Consumer behavior changes differently in emergencies. Understanding consumer food stockpiling behavior during COVID-19 pandemic can provide critical information for governments and policymakers to adjust inventory and response strategies. This paper analyzed consumer food stockpiling behavior, including the change of food reserve scale and willingness to pay for fresh food reserves in COVID-19. Our paper shows that the scale of food reserve extends from 3.37 to 7.37 days after the outbreak of COVID-19; if available, consumers on average are willing to pay 18.14 yuan (60.47%) premium for fresh products reserves. The result shows that food stockpiling behavior is fueled by a set of multiple motivations and subjective risk perception. Female, high education level and high-income consumers were more likely to reserve larger scale food reserves, but consumers’ willingness to pay for fresh food reserves is determined by income. This study was conducted when new infection cases continued to rise in the world. The story of food stockpiling during the COVID-19 pandemic in China is similar with the rest of world. Consumer stockpiling behavior in China can also be expanded to other countries to predict the change of food demand and understand more about consumer preferences in emergencies.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Current literature from the pandemic has found that the ability to pay for fresh food is associated with higher incomes.
“Current literature from the pandemic has found that the ability to pay for fresh food is associated with higher incomes [35].”
From Material Hardship and Stress from COVID-19 in Immigrant Chinese American Families with Infants (2022) · cites this paper as [35]
The Results (Table 2; page unavailable) show a positive association between the highest income category and willingness to pay for fresh-food reserves during COVID-19. The Methodology describes this as a hypothetical price-choice survey for a package of reserves, not a measure of consumers’ actual ability to pay for fresh food generally. (LLM, conf=0.85)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Slovic, P. (1987) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.3563507 · Cited by 9,271 · see citing works
Langer, E. J. (1975) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.32.2.311 · Cited by 3,909 · see citing works
Welfare Evaluations in Contingent Valuation Experiments with Discrete Responses
Hanemann, W. M. (1984) · American Journal of Agricultural Economics · doi:10.2307/1240800 · Cited by 2,829 · see citing works
Food quality and safety: consumer perception and demand
Grunert, K. G. (2005) · European Review of Agricultural Economics · doi:10.1093/eurrag/jbi011 · Cited by 1,741 · see citing works
Violence and Risk Preference: Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan
Callen, M. J., Isaqzadeh, M., Long, J. D., & Sprenger, C. D. (2013) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.104.1.123 · Cited by 551 · see citing works
Estimating demand for public goods: An experiment
Böhm, P. (1972) · European Economic Review · doi:10.1016/0014-2921(72)90001-3 · Cited by 482 · see citing works
Chuang, Y., & Schechter, L. (2015) · Journal of Development Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.07.008 · Cited by 359 · see citing works
Do Risk Preferences Change? Evidence from the Great East Japan Earthquake
Hanaoka, C., Shigeoka, H., & Watanabe, Y. (2018) · American Economic Journal Applied Economics · doi:10.1257/app.20170048 · Cited by 329 · see citing works
Willingness to pay for the “Green Food” in China
Yu, X., Gao, Z., & Zeng, Y. (2014) · Food Policy · doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2014.01.003 · Cited by 294 · see citing works
Self-citationHow Do Respondents with Uncertain Willingness to Pay Answer Contingent Valuation Questions?
Ready, R. C., Navrud, S., & Dubourg, W. R. (2001) · Land Economics · doi:10.2307/3147126 · Cited by 186 · see citing works
Extreme Weather Events in Agriculture: A Systematic Review
Cogato, A., Meggio, F., Migliorati, M. D. A., et al. (2019) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su11092547 · Cited by 176 · see citing works
Introduction: Tastes, Castes and Culture: The Influence of Society on Preferences
Fehr, E., & Hoff, K. (2011) · The Economic Journal · doi:10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02478.x · Cited by 171 · see citing works
OECD (2018) · OECD eBooks · doi:10.1787/9789264085169-7-en · Cited by 153 · see citing works
Contingent Valuation: Past, Present and Future
Hoyos, D., & Mariel, P. (2010) · Prague Economic Papers · doi:10.18267/j.pep.380 · Cited by 147 · see citing works
Risk Perception and the Value of Safety
McDaniels, T. L., Kamlet, M. S., & Fischer, G. W. (1992) · Risk Analysis · doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.1992.tb00706.x · Cited by 128 · see citing works
Consumer Willingness to Pay for Fair Trade Coffee: A Chinese Case Study
Yang, S., Hu, W., Mupandawana, M., & Yun, L. (2012) · Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics · doi:10.1017/s1074070800000146 · Cited by 111 · see citing works
Savage, I. (1993) · Journal of Risk and Uncertainty · doi:10.1007/bf01065351 · Cited by 107 · see citing works
Intertemporal Pricing and Consumer Stockpiling
Su, X. (2010) · Operations Research · doi:10.1287/opre.1090.0797 · Cited by 102 · see citing works
Online Survey Data Quality and Its Implication for Willingness‐to‐Pay: A Cross‐Country Comparison
Gao, Z., House, L., & Xie, J. (2015) · Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d agroeconomie · doi:10.1111/cjag.12069 · Cited by 91 · see citing works
Self-citationChinese consumer quality perception and preference of sustainable milk
Gao, Z., Li, C., Bai, J., & Fu, J. (2016) · China Economic Review · doi:10.1016/j.chieco.2016.05.004 · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Self-citationThe interaction between country of origin and genetically modified orange juice in urban China
Gao, Z., Yu, X., Li, C., et al. (2018) · Food Quality and Preference · doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2018.03.016 · Cited by 58 · see citing works
Self-citationGao, Z., Wong, S. S., House, L., & Spreen, T. H. (2014) · British Food Journal · doi:10.1108/bfj-12-2012-0303 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Self-citationOn the gap between payment card and closed-ended CVM-answers
Hackl, F., & Pruckner, G. J. (1999) · Applied Economics · doi:10.1080/000368499323940 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
Wang, E., & Gao, Z. (2017) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su9122282 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
Self-citationImprove access to the EU market by identifying French consumer preference for fresh fruit from China
Wang, E., Gao, Z., & Heng, Y. (2018) · Journal of Integrative Agriculture · doi:10.1016/s2095-3119(17)61837-9 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
Self-citationOn the stability of preferences: Experimental evidence from two disasters
Kuroishi, Y., & Sawada, Y. (2023) · European Economic Review · doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2023.104632 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Attribute Non-Attendance and Satisficing Behavior in Online Choice Experiments
Jones, M. S., House, L., & Gao, Z. (2015) · International Center for Food Chain and Network Research, Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität Bonn · doi:10.18461/pfsd.2015.1534 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Self-citationOn the Stability of Preferences:Experimental Evidence from Two DisastersPreprint
Kuroishi, Y., & Sawada, Y. (2019) · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Food Security: Issues and Perspectives
Pal, R. (2018) · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Finding True Consumer Attitudes: Do Validation Questions Help?Preprint
Gao, Z., House, L., Bi, X., et al. (2012) · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · doi:10.22004/ag.econ.123922 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Resilience effects in food consumption behaviour at the time of Covid-19: perspectives from Italy
Cavallo, C., Sacchi, G., & Carfora, V. (2020) · Heliyon · doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05676 · Cited by 133 · see citing works
“Also in China several cases of panic buying have been highlighted (Wang et al., 2020).”
García-Salirrosas, E. E., Escobar-Farfán, M., Gómez-Bayona, L., Moreno-López, G., Valencia-Arias, A., & Gallardo-Canales, R. (2024) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1282383 · Cited by 94 · see citing works
Yue, W., Liu, N., Zheng, Q., & Wang, H. H. (2021) · Foods · doi:10.3390/foods10092156 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
“[3] who estimated that Chinese consumers on average were willing to pay about 60.”
BackgroundMaterial Hardship and Stress from COVID-19 in Immigrant Chinese American Families with Infants
Duh-Leong, C., Yin, H. S., Yi, S. S., Chen, S. L., Mui, A., Perrin, E. M., Zhao, Q., & Gross, R. S. (2022) · Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health · doi:10.1007/s10903-021-01267-8 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
- Authors
- Wang, E., An, N., Gao, Z., Kiprop, E., & Geng, X.
- Affiliations
- Nanjing Tech University (CN)
- Nanjing Agricultural University (CN)
- University of Florida (US)
- Corresponding author
- Geng, Xianhui
- Venue
- Food Security
- Published
- 2020-08
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 739-747
- ISSN
- 1876-4517 (ISSN-L)
- 1876-4525
- PMC
- PMC7406878
- OpenAlex
- W3047185142
- Cited by
- 217
- References
- 31
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 50 · 2022: 58 · 2021: 55 · 2020: 9
- FWCI
- 36.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Food Security (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Jiangsu Office of Philosophy and Social Science
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (CARS-28, 71903088)
- Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (CARS-28)
- China Agricultural Research System (CARS‐28)
- National Social Science Fund of China
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
- Keywords
- food hoarding, consumer behavior, willingness to pay, food reserves, COVID-19 pandemic, disaster preparedness, risk perception, demographic factors, food demand, China
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
