People stock up on toilet paper during crises because it’s a low-cost way to feel in control when everything else feels uncertain. The pattern repeats with striking consistency: a disruption hits the news, social media posts show empty shelves, and within days retailers can’t keep toilet paper in stock. The actual supply is rarely the problem. The buying behavior itself is.
The Psychology Behind the Panic
Panic buying is driven by four overlapping forces: the perceived threat of a crisis, fear of the unknown, the need to cope with anxiety, and social influence from watching others do the same thing. Of these, the coping mechanism is the one that explains toilet paper specifically. When a crisis is large and abstract, like a pandemic or a port strike, there’s very little any individual can do to change the situation. Buying a bulk pack of toilet paper doesn’t solve anything, but it does provide a sense of indirect control. You can’t stop a virus or reopen a shipping lane, but you can make sure your household has enough of a basic necessity. That feeling of preparation, however small, relieves anxiety.
Behavioral economists call this zero-risk bias. When you’re faced with many risks you can’t control, you gravitate toward eliminating at least one of them entirely. Stocking up on toilet paper removes the worry of running out. It’s the same impulse that leads other people to fill their pantry with canned goods or buy extra bottles of wine. The specific product matters less than the psychological payoff of crossing one fear off the list.
There’s also a concept called reactance. When people sense that access to a product might be restricted, they experience an urgent desire to secure it, even if the restriction hasn’t actually happened yet. A single photo of an empty shelf on social media can trigger that feeling across millions of people simultaneously. The product suddenly seems more valuable and more scarce than it was 24 hours earlier, not because of any real supply problem, but because the perception of scarcity has changed.
Why Toilet Paper Specifically
Toilet paper has a few qualities that make it uniquely vulnerable to panic buying. It’s bulky, so even a modest increase in purchasing clears shelves fast and creates a dramatic visual. It’s a product everyone uses daily, so the idea of running out feels genuinely uncomfortable. And it’s relatively cheap, which means buying extra doesn’t require a major financial commitment. You don’t need to justify a $15 purchase the way you’d hesitate over a $200 generator.
It’s also non-perishable. Unlike fresh food, toilet paper bought in a panic doesn’t go to waste. People know they’ll eventually use it, which lowers the psychological barrier to over-buying. This makes it a perfect target for what researchers describe as compensatory consumption: purchasing products not because you need them right now, but because the act of buying restores a sense of security that the crisis has taken away.
The Supply Chain Can’t Absorb the Spike
More than 99% of the toilet paper Americans use is manufactured domestically. Under normal conditions, there is no shortage. But the industry runs on lean supply chains, meaning retailers typically keep only a few weeks’ worth of inventory in their warehouses. When demand suddenly doubles or triples because millions of people are buying extra at the same time, those thin margins evaporate almost overnight.
This creates what economists call the bullwhip effect. A temporary spike in consumer demand gets amplified as it travels backward through the supply chain. Retailers place larger orders with distributors, who place even larger orders with manufacturers, who may not have the raw materials or production capacity to respond quickly. The result is a real shortage caused not by any failure of supply, but by a sudden, self-reinforcing surge in demand. Even though the original panic was based on a perceived problem, it creates an actual one.
The commercial toilet paper market adds another wrinkle. Roughly one-third of all tissue production is designated for “away from home” use: the large rolls and thin sheets found in offices, restaurants, and airports. When a crisis like a pandemic sends everyone home, demand for residential toilet paper spikes while commercial product sits unused. These two supply chains aren’t easily interchangeable because the products differ in size, packaging, and even the type of dispensers they fit.
This Has Happened Before
The most famous toilet paper panic predates social media by decades. In December 1973, during the U.S. gasoline shortage, a Wisconsin congressman released a statement warning about a “potential” toilet paper shortage. Writers for The Tonight Show picked up the quote and worked it into Johnny Carson’s monologue, dropping the word “potential.” Nearly 20 million viewers heard what sounded like a definitive warning, and the next morning supermarkets were overwhelmed. About a month later, Carson issued a correction: “For all my life in entertainment, I don’t want to be remembered as the man who created a false toilet paper scare. Apparently there is no shortage!”
The pattern repeated in March 2020 at the start of COVID-19 lockdowns, and again in October 2024 when dockworkers struck at ports along the East and Gulf coasts. In the 2024 case, reports of empty shelves appeared on TikTok and X within a single day of the strike beginning, with videos showing long lines at Costco and Target. The strike threatened to delay shipments of eucalyptus pulp imported from Brazil, a key raw material for major manufacturers. But the immediate shortage on shelves wasn’t caused by the strike itself. It was caused by consumers reacting to the possibility of a shortage.
The Self-Fulfilling Cycle
The core problem is that panic buying is rational for the individual but destructive for the group. If you believe other people are going to buy extra toilet paper, the smartest move for you is to also buy extra before it’s gone. This is true even if you know the underlying supply is fine, because the threat isn’t a manufacturing failure. It’s that other shoppers will empty the shelf before your next trip. Each person making that calculation adds to the very problem they’re trying to avoid.
Social media has dramatically accelerated this cycle. In 1973, it took a television broadcast reaching 20 million people to trigger a nationwide run. Today, a single video of bare shelves at one store can reach millions within hours, prompting people in completely unaffected areas to start buying. The speed of information, and misinformation, compresses what used to be a days-long process into something that unfolds in hours.
Once shelves are visibly empty, even people who weren’t worried begin to buy more than usual. The empty shelf becomes its own evidence that something is wrong, regardless of what caused it. Retailers then impose purchase limits, which paradoxically reinforces the sense of scarcity. A sign reading “Limit 2 per customer” tells your brain that this product is under threat, even if the store has a full pallet in the back room.
What Actually Helps
Supply chain experts consistently point to the same solution: people need to buy at their normal rate. Inventories are built to match typical consumption patterns. When purchasing spikes to two or three times the normal level, even for a week or two, it takes the system weeks to recover. During the 2024 port strike, Ronalds Gonzalez at NC State’s Tissue Pack Innovation Lab put it simply: “People need to calm down and stop buying more than what they need to allow inventories to remain stable.”
Improving supply chain transparency also helps on the industry side. The bullwhip effect worsens when each link in the chain is guessing about real demand. Better information sharing between retailers, distributors, and manufacturers can prevent the overcorrection that turns a one-week demand spike into a month-long shortage. But that’s a structural fix. On the consumer side, the most effective thing is recognizing the pattern for what it is: a cycle where fear of shortage creates the shortage, and where buying one extra pack means someone else finds an empty shelf and panics a little more.