The Impact of Social Anxiety on The Catering Industry: A Demand Chain Transformation from Eating Alone to Silent Ordering

Abstract

The continuous rise of social anxiety disorder globally, especially among urban youth, has prompted a re-examination of traditional social scenarios. As a high-frequency social scene, the catering industry significantly increases the psychological pressure of social anxiety sufferers by amplifying the risks of observation and evaluation, thereby driving consumers to generate new demands for dining environments and service models. This study focuses on the impact of social anxiety on consumers' psychological expectations and behavioral patterns when dining out, revealing its psychological mechanism of "increased evaluation threat and decreased sense of control", which drives demand to evolve from individual consumption to quiet dining and then to zero contact services. Catering enterprises have successfully constructed a "selectable low interaction/self-service" model through systematic changes in space reconfiguration (such as partitioned seating), process redesign (contactless ordering), and technology environment integration (Artificial Intelligence service system), reducing customer anxiety and labor costs, achieving dual optimization of operational efficiency and experience. This study not only confirms that psychological stress can be a core driving force for industry innovation but also provides differentiated competitive solutions for the catering industry and practical paradigms for mental health friendly business design.