Trait-based drivers of consumer resilience in a polycrisis: evidence from a post-socialist market

This study investigates how four trait-based dispositions – reasoning ability, emotional lability (reverse of stability), social courage and Honesty-Related Responding (indexed by the LIE/social desirability scale; lower scores indicate greater honesty) – influence crisis purchasing behaviors in Slovakia during overlapping COVID-19, energy-price and geopolitical shocks (2022–2023). Using an anonymous survey of 1,091 consumers, 24 crisis-shopping items and 14 crisis-situation food-purchasing statements, principal component analysis identified four purchasing patterns (stockpiling, panic resistance, altruism vs. egoism and market-signal reactivity) that explained 50.3% of the variance. Regression analyses show that higher emotional lability predicts stockpiling; higher reasoning ability and lower emotional lability (greater emotional stability) predict panic resistance; lower LIE (greater Honesty-Related Responding) predicts altruistic purchasing; and higher social courage predicts market-signal reactivity (proactive adaptation) to market signals. The findings extend crisis-consumption research to a post-socialist market and provide actionable segmentation cues for crisis communication and policy measures that reduce panic and encourage prosocial, adaptive purchasing, with a focus on linking trait-based dispositions to crisis purchasing patterns.