The impact of PTSD symptoms on post-disaster consumption: tertiary victims of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes in Türkiye

TL;DR

This study explores how PTSD symptoms from the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes in Türkiye affect the consumption behaviors of people far from the disaster zone.

Contribution

The study introduces a mixed-methods approach to examine how psychological states influence consumer behavior among tertiary disaster victims.

Findings

PTSD symptoms relate to post-disaster wellbeing and consumption through death anxiety, uncertainty intolerance, and search for meaning.

Media pressure influences how psychological states translate into consumer behaviors.

Participants used value-aligned purchases and media regulation as strategies for emotional resilience.

Abstract

The February 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes reshaped everyday life well beyond the impact zone; however, how disaster-linked psychological states influence psychosocial wellbeing and everyday behaviors, including consumer responses among tertiary victims (geographically distant yet psychologically affected), remains underexplored.

We employ an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design (QUAN → QUAL): a cross-sectional survey of Istanbul adults (N = 350) is modeled using PLS-SEM, followed by 24 semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis, integrated via joint displays.

Quantitatively, PTSD relates to post-disaster wellbeing and consumption directly and indirectly through death anxiety (DA), intolerance of uncertainty (IUS), and search for meaning (MLQ-S); perceived media pressure (ME) attenuates these translations on average. Qualitatively, participants described securing basics and redundant backups as control-restoration and “emotional insurance” to preserve safety, small indulgences as low-guilt self-care that supports emotional health, media as a double-edged influence (unregulated viewing amplifies anxiety; deliberate curation dampens it), and purposeful, value-aligned purchases as identity repair and resilience-building.

The findings extend terror-management, control-restoration, and meaning-making accounts to vicarious-trauma contexts and identify media regulation as a key boundary condition. Practically, they support public health risk communication that normalizes selective exposure, ethical preparedness that restores agency and wellbeing without excess, and interventions that channel recovery toward responsible self-care and value-aligned choices.

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