The answer is both curious and hilarious. I just got in from my local grocery where I noticed the toilet paper shelves were empty. Seeing a store employee, I asked him why people were buying so much. He shrugged and said he didn’t know. "Probably plenty in the warehouse." Because of my consulting business, I happened to know that there was at least one Kimberly Clarke plant in the next state over—Wisconsin. They make Scott and Cottonelle toilet paper as well as Kleenex. I’m pretty certain we don’t import any from China. I suspect, instead, that a lot of the Chinese forests have been felled long since, much like the Brits. But with all those nearby Wisconsin forests, I’m sure there’s no shortage for making paper of all sorts.
So why are people hoarding toilet paper? Lo and behold, several were curious about my question and did even more homework.
All kinds of journalists and specialists weighed in on the “problem.”
Australia has also suffered from panic buying of toilet paper despite plentiful domestic supply. A risk expert in the country explained it this way: “Stocking up on toilet paper is … a relatively cheap action, and people like to think that they are ‘doing something’ when they feel at risk.” I didn’t know that, but I’d need a lot of research to believe it.
Brian Cook, University of Melbourne, said that his suspicion is that it is how people react to stress: they want an element of comfort and security. This is an example of “zero risk bias,” in which 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. Ummm, maybe.
“Fear is contagious,” says Steven Taylor, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and author of the Psychology of Pandemics. “We pick up cues by looking to other people—it’s how stampedes happen in stadiums—so if you’re in a shopping centre and you see some people around you acting in a frightened way and stocking up, that’s going to have a fear contagion effect that causes other people to start over-purchasing.” Really?