Predicting the severity of excessive buying using the Excessive Buying Rating Scale and Compulsive Buying Scale

Buying-shopping disorder (BSD) is a disabling condition that is characterized by excessive buying and associated phenomena. While the recently released International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) have not included excessive buying as a formal mental health disorder, the ICD-11 has listed BSD as an example of “other specified impulse-control disorders”. This paper presents findings from a cross-sectional analogue study examining a new measure (the Excessive Buying Rating Scale; EBRS) based on diagnostic criteria proposed by McElroy et al., 1994, as well as cognitive and affective predictors of symptom severity. The present sample consisted of 358 participants who completed measures of excessive buying; a subset of the sample (n = 182) also responded to mood, cognitive and self measures. The results support the utility of the EBRS and its unifactorial structure. Being female and having heightened buying cognitions were significant unique predictors of excessive buying severity, while age and self-ambivalence, but not depression, added to the prediction of buying severity. This study offers a promising measure of BSD. Additionally, the results provide support for the importance of buying cognitions, social factors and the motivational importance of buying objects to provide a sense of self worth and certainty to BSD.