Consumer Pandemic Coping: A Stage Model of COVID-19 Response

The current article presents a descriptive analysis of marketplace data from an online freelance platform in the early months of COVID-19. We investigate changes in the behavioral patterns of buyers and sellers on the platform to study consumer coping responses during the pandemic. We draw from the literature on coping with loss and personal adversity to present a consumer pandemic coping model derived from a synthesis of existing stage theories of coping and adaptation. The model presented can explain the aggregate changes in marketplace activity (e.g., traffic, sentiment, adoption, transaction patterns) we observe during the first several months of the pandemic. Our findings suggest that temporal coping processes can drive market behavior. This article provides insights about consumer coping to researchers and policy makers, as well as to firms who aim to be more prepared in the face of future crises.