Perception Of Scarcity Research Articles

Support provided by healthcare professionals to the mothers of newborns in the neonatal unit

Objective: To evaluate the support offered by health professionals to mothers of newborns admitted to the neonatal unit.Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach conducted at the Regional Hospital of Tucuruí, in the state of Pará, region of the Brazilian Amazon, where 33 mothers who had newborn children admitted to the neonatal unit responded to the structured adapted version of the NPST (Nurse Parent Support Tool ). Results: Most were aged 20-34 years (48%), married or in a stable relationship (69%), multiracial (87%), housewife (57%), with up to 11 years of study (72%). The scores for the NPST subdomains were 3.39 ± 1.65 (Communication and Information Support), 4.13 ± 1.33 (Emotional Support), 3.93 ± 1.46 (Incentive Support), and 4.21 ± 1,27 (Instrumental Support). The findings revealed unsatisfactory communication and information support from health professionals to mothers, although they expressed satisfaction with the care provided. Conclusions: The perception of scarcity of human resources and health education, verified in this study, weakens the communication process during hospitalization and influences the mother's well-being, leading to a decrease in the efficiency of the support provided. The improvement in this area can lead to better results in daily practice. The replication of this study to other locations can lead to more significant assistance to mothers of hospitalized neonates and provide new technologies and strategies in health education.

Consumers Buying Behaviour and Challenges Faced by Consumers During COVID-19 Pandemic Regarding FMCG Products ( During Indian Lockdown)

Pandemics are the imminent health challenges for consumers whereby fear and panic are integral human responses historically. Panic behavior during pandemic is an expected response consumer threatens the ability to cope and destroy the existing balance in life. Consumers develop much-unexplained behavior which differs from region to region, culture to culture. Panic buying / increased buying behavior has been observed during public health emergencies since the ancient period. However, the exact psychological explanation responsible for it has not sought systematically. Therefore, the study is to intend a thrust to identify the possible psychological explanations behind the consumer buying behavior during pandemics. A perception of scarcity is strongly linked with the consumer buying behavior during pandemics, and collecting & saving behaviors increases if the scarcity develops for the immediate necessaries. It also creates a feeling of insecurity which in turn activates another mechanism to collect things. Panic buying also has been linked with perceived feeling of insecurity and instability of certain situations. Furthermore, supply disruption, a condition where normal product supply in supply chain interrupted, has been frequently observed during a disaster or other unwanted calamities. This also led to a feeling of insecurity. The objective of study is to analyze how pandemic affect consumer buying pattern and sentiments.

The panic buying behavior of consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining the influences of uncertainty, perceptions of severity, perceptions of scarcity, and anxiety

The lack of a vaccine for COVID-19 and the limited amount of reliable data on the cessation of the disease have made people feel more vulnerable to the disease. As a result, people in many countries have been found to engage in panic purchasing, which has adversely affected the supply system for the retail market. Applying behavioral inhibition system theory, reactance theory, and expectancy theory, this research examines how psychological factors such as uncertainty, perceptions of severity, perceptions of scarcity, and anxiety affected the panic purchasing behavior of consumers. This study was conducted in Malaysia in light of the 2020 outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results from structural equation modeling indicate that uncertainty, and perceptions of scarcity are positively associated with anxiety but not with the panic purchasing behavior of consumers. In addition, anxiety fully mediates the relationship among these variables and the panic purchasing behavior of consumers. Taken together, these findings provide support for doing more empirical research in order to develop a more resilient retail strategy and to improve consumer service.

The Determinants of Panic Buying during COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen an unmatched level of panic buying globally, a type of herd behavior whereby consumers buy an uncommonly huge amount of products because of a perception of scarcity. Drawing on the health belief model, perceived scarcity, and anticipated regret theories, this paper formulated a theoretical model that linked the determinants of panic buying and analyzed their interrelationships. Subsequently, data were collated from 508 consumers through an online survey questionnaire in Singapore that was conducted during the early stage of the pandemic, before the onset of the circuit breaker in April 2020. Next, an analysis of the results was done through structural equation modeling. It showed that the effect of the health belief model dimensions (i.e., perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, outcome expectation, cues to action, and self-efficacy) on panic buying is partially mediated by the consumers’ perceived scarcity of products. Furthermore, the effect of perceived scarcity on panic buying is partially mediated by consumers’ anticipation of regret. This paper expands on the current theoretical understanding of panic buying behavior, giving insights into the possible measures and solutions that policymakers and relevant stakeholders can uptake to manage panic buying in future a pandemic or health crisis.

Selling goods on e-commerce platforms: The impact of scarcity messages

E-commerce platforms prominently advertise low levels of inventory (“only three units left”) for 'long tail' goods in physical or digital formats. Thus, they wish to trigger consumer perceptions of scarcity and ultimately promote sales. In this paper, we develop a model on how in scarcity messages, the inventory level affects the online sales goods. We test the model against evidence from e-commerce sales data of about 35,000 printed books. We find that for e-commerce sales, lower inventory promotes sales late but inhibits purchases in the early stages of the purchase process. We reflect this counterintuitive finding against propositions grounded in different theoretical bodies. Thereupon, we summarize our research contributions and provide some implications for research and practice. We conclude with identified study limitations and suggestions for future research.

The influence of human crowding and store messiness on consumer purchase intention– the role of contamination and scarcity perceptions

The current research explores how store environmental cues – human crowding and store messiness influence consumer purchase intention across two product type (ingestible and non-ingestible). Importantly, the research also examines the mediating role of contamination perception on these effects. Specifically, for ingested products (e.g., eggs), crowded and messy store environments signal contamination and lead to decrease in purchase intention. However, for non-ingested products (e.g., dishwashing liquid), contamination inferences are observed for store messiness but not for human crowding. Further, role of perceived scarcity is examined which suggests that in ingestible product category perception of scarcity can mitigate the negative effect of contamination on purchase intention.

The role of short-term changes in cognitive capacity on economic expenditure among Kenyan agro-pastoralists.

The increased exposure of pastoralist communities in East Africa to climatic shocks has focused attention on the resilience of these communities. Although many social scientists directly or indirectly infer versions of homo-economic agents, increasing evidence in development behavioral economics, indicates that such assumptions may be misplaced. Despite on-going advances in the science concerning the effects of stress on dynamic changes in short-term cognitive capacity, there remains limited understanding of the effects of changes in cognitive capacity on economic decision making. The present research empirically evaluates the drivers of short-term changes in cognitive capacity–cognitive ability and heuristic use–and its effect on crop and livestock expenditure among predominantly poor Kenyan agro-pastoralists. Three rounds of cognition and survey data from Samburu, Kenya is analysed. The primary data was collected at the end of the 2015–16 East African drought and covers an 11-month period between October 2016 and September 2017. Dynamic panel estimation, employing maximum likelihood, is used on balanced and unbalanced data. Results indicate that fluid intelligence and heuristic use, along with literacy and stressors, affect crop expenditure. Perceptions of scarcity, relative to prior expectations, are also identified as an important determinant of short-term changes in cognitive ability. These results underscore the importance of better understanding the effects of short-term changes in cognitive capacity on economic expenditure among the poor.

Exploring the risk-taking tendency among migrant workers in the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of ontological security

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the social environment of most laborers around the world and has profoundly affected people's ontological security and behavior choices. Among them, the migrant workers are one of the groups most affected by the pandemic. This study explored the mechanism of the impact of the scarcity of ontological security caused by the pandemic on the risk-taking tendency of migrant workers in China through two studies. This study adopts two experimental method, with 514 participants in the first study and 357 participants in the second study. The results show that the pandemic-induced scarcity perception of ontological security promotes their risk-taking tendency, and the migrant workers' cognitive reflection ability, sense of unfairness and expected benefits play a significant mediating role in this process. The scarcity perception of ontological security promotes migrant workers' risk-taking tendency by reducing the cognitive reflection ability, triggering the sense of unfairness and overstating expected benefits. The conclusion of this study can help migrant workers, enterprises and government to avoid potential workplace and social bad behavior.

Reverse Information Sharing: Reducing Costs in Supply Chains with Yield Uncertainty

Supply uncertainty in produce supply chains presents major challenges to retailers. Supply shortages create frequent disruptions in terms of promised delivery times, quantity and quality delivered. To alleviate these challenges, dual sourcing---a strategy in which buyers source a good from two different suppliers---is commonly employed by retailers in these supply chains. However, the benefits of dual sourcing cannot be fully realized when a lack of transparency exists between retailers and suppliers. In this case, perceived scarcity leads to over-ordering, further exacerbating the problem of supply unreliability in settings where multiple retailers compete for supply. This paper studies a supply chain for a perishable good consisting of N retailers who compete for supply and practice dual sourcing, but do not have transparency to the inventory distributions of their suppliers a priori. The paper develops an analytical model to capture the retailers' ordering dynamics over repeated iterations. When the retailers underestimate the suppliers' inventory, their orders converge to an equilibrium where all retailers drastically over-order. This results in higher retailer costs and supply chain waste, as well as higher costs to the suppliers for certain contract structures and parameters. The paper analyzes the impact of an information sharing scheme in which suppliers share inventory information downstream. This reverse information sharing counteracts perceptions of scarcity thereby reducing over-ordering.

Resource Scarcity Perceptions in Supply Chains: The Effect of Buyer Altruism on the Propensity for Collaboration

When faced with potential resource scarcities, purchasing managers have to make decisions regarding how to react to such scarcity threats. This can be challenging as there is often uncertainty surrounding the potential scarcity. Buyers’ mitigation decisions are impacted by their perceptions, which may lead to potentially ineffective mitigation responses. Resource dependence theory as well as supply chain literature emphasize the importance of collaborating with supply chain partners to secure access to scarce resources. However, behavioral research argues that the scarcity mindset causes individuals to behave more competitively, rather than collaboratively. This research examines the extent to which buyers’ perceptions of scarcity threats affect the decision to act altruistically towards the major supplier as well as to choose to collaborate with a major supplier in order to mitigate the scarcity. The research uses a scenario‐based role‐playing experiment with respondents serving as purchasing managers. The research demonstrates the complexity of resource scarcity management and illustrates that when faced with resource scarcity, buyers are actually less prone to collaborate with critical resource suppliers. This effect is robust, regardless of the level of relational capital present in the buyer–supplier relationship and regardless of individual factors, such as work experience and previous purchasing experience.

The drivers of desirability in scarcity marketing

PurposeMarketers make an effort to affect consumers through scarcity marketing thus shaping the perception of scarcity and creating desirability for consumers. To expand the scarcity-expensiveness-desirability model and to enhance insights for practical applications, this study modifies the causal relationship among two types of scarcity, three types of expansiveness and desirability.Design/methodology/approachThis study surveyed 400 Taipei city residents who had purchase experience with luxury brands products in Taiwan. The study employed structural equation modeling as empirical analysis.FindingsThe empirical results show that limited-quantity scarcity main influences perceived social status and then affects desirability. The second path is that limited-quantity scarcity influences perceived uniqueness and then affects desirability. Therefore, perceived social status and perceived uniqueness dominate the majority of effects on desirability because they are the recognition of the individual compared to others, especially when applied to luxury goods.Practical implicationsBecause limited-quantity scarcity has a greater impact on desirability than limited-time scarcity in the empirical results, marketers can adopt limited-quantity scarcity messages that are better than limited-time scarcity, to increase consumers’ desire to purchase luxury goods.Originality/valueThe first novelty of this study is dividing scarcity marketing into limited-quantity and limited-time scarcity in the scarcity-expensiveness-desirability model. This study extends expensiveness in the scarcity-expensiveness-desirability model with a complete demonstration, that is, perceived social status, perceived uniqueness and perceived value, which is the second novelty of this study.

Store disorderliness effect: shoppers' competitive behaviours in a fast-fashion retail store

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of store messiness and human crowding on shoppers' competitive behaviours, in-store hoarding and in-store hiding, through the mediating effect of perceived scarcity and perceived competition.Design/methodology/approach2 (store messiness: messy × tidy) × 2 (human crowding: high × low) between-subject factorial experiment was conducted online to manipulate retail store atmospheric factors. A total of 154 responses were collected through Amazon MTurk. The hypotheses were analysed using ANOVA and PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) procedure.FindingsResults suggest that store messiness and human crowding within a fast-fashion store lead to perception of scarcity and competition that further affects competitive behaviours. When consumers experience store messiness, they are likely to hide merchandise in store, thus making it inaccessible for other consumers. Further, when they experience human crowding in the store, they feel that the products will be gone immediately so they have a tendency to hoard them.Research limitations/implicationsThis study examined the effects of scarcity perception by studying the case of fast-fashion retailers; generalizability needs to be established across different contexts.Practical implicationsRetailers by manipulating human crowding and store messiness can create a perception of scarcity in their stores, thus enhancing sales. However, they should also pay attention to deviant behaviours such as in-store hoarding and in-store hiding as these behaviours may decrease the store sales.Originality/valueThis research contributed to the retailing literature by finding a significant relationship between human crowding, store messiness and competitive behaviours through perceived scarcity and competition.

Online media use and HPV vaccination intentions in mainland China: integrating marketing and communication perspectives to improve public health.

This study investigates the role of media in shaping human papilloma virus vaccination intentions in mainland China by applying both communication and marketing-focused theoretical frameworks in order to better understand ways to increase vaccine uptake across young men and women in China. An online survey (N = 359) revealed direct effects of online information consumption on perceived scarcity of the vaccine, as well as an indirect effect via perceived influence of media on others. Scarcity perceptions, in turn, predicted vaccine attitudes and behavioral intentions. Additionally, gender differences emerged in the data. Compared with women, men's intent to be vaccinated were not high, even if they realized the vaccine shortage. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Only one room left! How scarcity cues affect booking intentions on hospitality platforms

Abstract Communication of scarcity has emerged as a fundamental marketing principle in electronic commerce and for hospitality platforms in particular. We investigate the effect of scarcity cues on consumer behavior. First, we explore actual market data from Airbnb and Booking.com, and find that scarcity cues are used differently by hotel versus peer-based hospitality platforms. Second, we conduct an online experiment on consumer perceptions of scarcity. Specifically, we find support for two distinct effect paths, along which scarcity perceptions lead to increased booking intentions through urgency (the get-it-before-it’s-gone effect) and value (the must-be-good effect). We discuss practical implications of our results as well as the potential for the misuse of scarcity claims for unfair competition.

Modelling of sectoral energy demand through energy intensities in MEDEAS integrated assessment model

The estimation of future energy demand is a key factor for the development of effective alternative policies towards a low carbon economy. This paper describes a novel method to estimate the energy demand in the new integrated assessment framework MEDEAS based on the projection of sectoral final energy intensities. The dynamic of each of the sectoral final energy intensity is broken down into (1) improvement in energy efficiency and (2) substitution of the final energy. The speed of changes in these factors depend on physical supply-demand unbalances in the market, climate mitigation and other energy saving policies and the perception of scarcity of the different economic agents. The simulated case studies in MEDEAS-World under the narrative of the Business-as-usual (BAU) scenario have allowed validating the model's robustness and showing the potentiality of its application.

Influence of number magnitude in luxury brand names on consumer preference

In this study we built on scarcity theory, to conduct two experiments in which we investigated the influence of arbitrary numbers we inserted into brand names of luxury products. In Study 1 we recruited 68 consumers who were each assigned to one of two groups (small number or big number for brand name), in order to test consumers’ preferences for luxury brands with names of different number magnitudes. The results revealed that a product with a small number in the brand name was received more favorably than was a product with a big number in the name. Scarcity mediated the relationship between number magnitude and preference. In Study 2 we tested the moderating role of involvement. Number magnitude of the brand name influenced preference through scarcity when involvement was high but not when it was low. Thus, we found that numbers in the name of a luxury brand arbitrarily impacted consumers’ perceptions of scarcity, which influenced their preference in regard to brand. This relationship was moderated by involvement. The results suggest that manufacturers of luxury brands should use a small number in their brand name, and should increase the degree of consumer involvement to elevate consumer preference for the brand.

Alqueva dam in the Guadiana River Basin—Past and future of illusive water abundance

AbstractThe historical need for water storage in the Guadiana Basin led to the construction of a large scale dam, creating a reservoir with capacity of 4,000 million m3 and maximum flooded area of 25,000 ha. The Alqueva Dam is a large multi‐purpose project (irrigation, hydro‐electricity production, domestic supply, recreation) that answers to the old expectations of water storage in the dry region of Alentejo, Portugal. The long “stop‐start” decision process was dominated by political objectives, and both local communities and major political forces envisaged Alqueva as a “magic” solution for development of the Alentejo. This Project had a general national consensus, although many environmental NGOs were clearly against it. The final decision of the European Union to fund the Project, due to the regional development perspective, was the decisive step to resume the project. This paper discusses the “social perception of scarcity” and the paradox of how this addition of a large volume of water storage in the Guadiana basin led to a dramatic cultural change in regional landscape and livelihoods, creating new opportunities for foreign stakeholders, and users, but at the same time did not necessarily increase access to water for most of the local communities and small scale farms.

The Influence of Visual Heaviness on the Perception of Scarcity

The Influence of Visual Heaviness on the Perception of Scarcity

From Scarcity to Abundance: The New Geopolitics of Energy

For most of the Petroleum Age, and even as recently as ten years ago, the politics of energy were largely governed by perceptions of scarcity: the assumption that global supplies of most primary fuels were finite and would eventually prove insufficient to satisfy rising worldwide demand, resulting in intense competition over what remained. The enduring prevalence of this view led many oil-importing nations to establish close ties with their major foreign suppliers and to employ force on occasion to ensure the safety of overseas supply lines. This outlook guided American foreign policy for over half a century, resulting in several U.S. interventions in the Persian Gulf area. Recently, however, a combination of technological and political considerations – the introduction of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to extract oil and natural gas from previously inaccessible shale formations on one hand and rising concern over climate change on the other – has largely extinguished the perception of scarcity, introducing entirely new dynamics into the geopolitics of energy.

Scarcity Perception Personality Theory

A personality theory focuses on variations among individuals. In forming a personality theory, it is essential to construct an image of the individual and the psychological processes that comprise that picture. A personality theory aims to investigate the psychological variations that form our personality (McLeod, 2014). The primary focus of my personality theory is comprised on the concept of general scarcity. Scarcity is the idea of having a shortage of an item. Scarcity is a wanting or lack of something that we have determined that we must have. Scarcity is a term that is often used in the field of economics, which drives the forces within various types of economic systems. However, I suggest that our perception of scarcity dominates more than just our financial system it has a much larger role in our lives. Within my theory of personality, there is a biopsychosocial aspect of our existence associated with our perception of scarcity that forms our personality and determines our view of oneness with our multi-environments. How we perform in our environments determines the shape, direction, and stability of those conditions. There is an order of unity between our perception of scarcity and environments.