Whenever I see these pop up I basically never believe them. They are even worse when made up scarcity is involved.
I want to go one step further and say this is actually a dark pattern.
I want to go one step further and say this is actually a dark pattern.
To solve this in a virtual environment you'd need a comparable amount of implicit trust. For #1 it's doable: have a trustworthy domain name. Amazon.com is a lot more trustworthy than look-at-my-shop.tk. For #2 I don't think there's a trustworthy equivalent, since it's either off-site by a third party or unverifiable by users.
If I feel like a site is trying to pressure or rush me into a sale then I usually end up feeling negatively towards that site and thus shop elsewhere.