Wealthier Americans are more than twice as likely to admit stealing at self-checkout kiosks, even as many blame high prices and tariffs for the choice.
A LendingTree survey of more than 2,050 U.S. adults found 27% admitted they had purposefully taken an item without scanning it at a self-checkout, up sharply from 15% in 2023, NBC Philadelphia reported.
The income split undercuts the usual hardship story. Households making over $100,000 a year admitted the practice at a 40% rate. Households making under $49,999 came in at 17%. Higher earners were more than twice as likely to say they had done it.
Age tracked the same way. Millennials led at 41%. Gen Z followed at 37%. Baby Boomers landed at 2%. Men were twice as likely as women to take something without scanning.
Nearly half of those who admitted theft cast it as necessity, not greed. Forty-seven percent said essentials had become unaffordable. Forty-eight percent pointed to price increases they tied to tariffs. The survey still leaves a plain fact on the table: the group most able to pay admitted the highest rates.
LendingTree chief credit analyst Matt Schulz tied the jump to how stores now run the front end.
"Largely unattended self-checkouts provide a potential opportunity for folks to help themselves."
That design choice is exactly why cities and states have started writing new rules around the machines. Lawmakers in multiple states have moved to rein in self-checkout kiosks at big-box retailers after theft complaints piled up.
Schulz did not pretend shoppers forget the law. He said they weigh it and still roll the dice.
"Even though people know that stealing is wrong and most understand the risk they’re taking, tough times require tough choices, and lots of people are clearly willing to take a risk."
Risk calculation is not the same as need. A household clearing six figures has more room to absorb a grocery bill than one under $50,000. The admissions ran the other direction.
Self-checkout was sold as speed and lower labor cost. What stores got was a quieter path for walkouts and skipped scans. Rhode Island answered with the first statewide mandate on staffing ratios at self-checkout lanes, forcing more employees back onto the floor.
California cities have gone further on store-level limits. San Francisco shoppers have faced new caps as supervisors pushed tighter self-checkout limits and store rules aimed at theft and thin staffing.
West Hollywood approved its own restrictions while shoplifting climbed across the state, and separate proposals have targeted large chains. One San Francisco measure sought to curb self-checkout at Walmart and other big stores on the same theory: fewer unwatched screens, fewer five-finger discounts.
None of those local fights appear in the LendingTree numbers. The survey does show why managers and city halls keep circling the same machines. When more than one in four users admit they have skipped a scan, the honor system is not holding.
Respondents leaned hard on cost-of-living talk. Essentials out of reach. Tariff-linked price hikes. Tough times, tough choices. Those lines sit next to a demographic chart that does not look like pure survival.
Millennials and Gen Z, not retirees on fixed incomes, posted the highest admission rates. Higher-income homes outpaced lower-income homes by more than two to one. Men outpaced women by two to one. If hardship alone drove the behavior, the pattern would run downhill with income. It ran uphill.
LendingTree is an online loan marketplace, not a police agency, and the poll is self-reported. People who steal and stay quiet are not in the 27%. The share willing to admit it on a survey still rose from 15% to 27% in two years. That is a cultural tell as much as a wallet tell.
Stores built a checkout model that removes the cashier’s eyes. Shoppers noticed. Some treated the gap as a discount. The wealthier cohort, on this evidence, treated it more often.
Personal responsibility does not slide off the cart because the kiosk has no attendant. A skipped scan is still theft, and the households least short on cash were the ones most willing to say they took the chance.