We've all seen the aisles at our local grocery store lately. Barren shelves in areas that are usually stocked full of toilet paper, bread, disinfectant wipes and bottled water have been the norm lately.

Even though we are all seemingly well stocked up on these essentials, social media has been begging the question, "why?" In particular, why toilet paper?

As we know by now, COVID-19 is a respiratory infection and none of the symptoms match up with any issue toilet paper is effective at dealing with.

So why are we hoarding TP?

Dr. Jay Zagorsky, Senior Lecturer at Boston University's Questrom School of Business has a theory. He points to the "Zero Risk Bias" as the reason.

"Zero Risk Bias (is when) people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount," Zagorsky wrote for the online publication The Conversation.

"Hoarding also makes people feel secure. This is especially relevant when the world is faced with a novel disease over which all of us have little or no control. However, we can control things like having enough toilet paper in case we are quarantined."

So there you go. Apparently we're not really dealing with the risk and we want to feel secure. Sounds good to me.

 

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