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Shoplifting, unethical consumer behaviour, and

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PAID 4532

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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Personality and Individual Differences

Shoplifting, unethical consumer behaviour, and personality

Vincent Egan *, David Taylor

Department of Psychology Forensic Section, University of Leicester, 106 New Walk, Leicester LE1 7EA, UK

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a r t i c l e

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Article history:
Received 5 June 2009
Received in revised form 26 January 2010
Accepted 8 February 2010
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Shoplifting
Theft
Unethical consumer behaviour
Personality
Crime

The degree individual differences inuence lower-level petty offending is unclear, as most emphasis in
forensic research is upon sexual and violent offending. A sample of 114 shoppers completed measures
of personality, attitudes to unethical consumer behaviour (UCB) and shoplifting. Those lower in emotional stability (ES), higher in extraversion (E), and lower on agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C)
and intellect (I) were more accepting of UCB and shoplifting. Attitudes to shoplifting and UCB were both
best predicted by lower C, lower A, lower I and higher ES. A structural equation model found that a latent
variable of dishonest consumer behaviour created out of UCB and shoplifting was predicted by low A and
low C, whereas E and younger age predicted UCB alone. These results suggest that UCB reects transient
opportunism possibly reducing with maturation and education, whereas dishonest consumer behaviour
involves generic predictors of anti-social tendencies.
2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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1. Introduction

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From 1997 to 2002 losses resulting from shoplifting in the UK

exceeded 600 million pounds per annum (Tonglet, 2002). The lifetime prevalence of shoplifting in the US population is 11.3% (Blanco et al., 2008). Day, Maltby, Giles, and Wingrove (2000) describe
shoplifting as an offence committed by persons too timid to take
other criminal risks, whereas Schnieder (2005) regards shoplifting
as part of a broader pattern of offending a view substantially supported by Blanco et al.s observations (op cit). Other retail-oriented
offences also involve the dishonest acquisition, use and disposal of
goods and services (Callen & Ownbey, 2003), for example, changing
price tags, fraudulent refunds, or ignoring laws related to intellectual property (Muncy & Vitell, 1992). Dishonest activity hurts the
consumer, as retailers raise prices to cover losses and the cost of
increased commercial security (Tonglet, 2002). The current study
seeks to examine which general personality traits predict attitudes
to shoplifting and unethical consumer behaviour in an opportunistic sample of British shoppers.
Early research in this eld described particular clusters of shoplifters, for example boosters (criminals specialising in shoplifting)
and snitches (occasional shoplifters) (Cameron, 1964). Such work
assumes too much specicity in offenders, and more prosaic factors youth, lower socio-economic status, being female are often
more explanatory (Baumer & Rosenbaum, 1984; Klemke, 1992;
Krasnovsky & Lane, 1998). For example, Cox, Cox, and Moschis
(1990) found 3040% of adolescents had shoplifted in the previous

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journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

* Corresponding author. Fax: +44 116 252 3636.

E-mail addresses: vincent.egan@le.ac.uk, ve2@le.ac.uk (V. Egan).

year. Shoplifting signicantly decreases with age (Klemke, 1978),

reiterating general patterns of age-related decline in crime. Unethical consumer behaviour is akin to fraud. Muncy and Vitell (1992)
devised a questionnaire with 27 consumer behaviour statements,
which collapsed into four factors. The rst was proactively beneting at the expense of the seller (which refers to benet that the
customer receives due to their own actions, for example, returning
merchandise to a store after you have damaged the item, then asking for a refund). The second was passively beneting at the expense of the seller (where the customer receives benet through
no actions of their own, for example getting too much change).
The third was deceptive practices (in which the consumer deceives
the seller, for example, being economical with the truth on an income tax return). The last was dened as no harm/no foul (where
nobody is directly harmed by the act, e.g., recording music instead
of buying it). A US student sample found younger adults more
accepting of unethical behaviour than older adults, and females
less accepting of the behaviour than males (Callen & Ownbey,
2003).
Individual differences in personality and attitude generally
drive offending (Miller & Lynam, 2001), and Tonglet (2002) found
attitudes the main predictor of shoplifting intentions for UK
respondents attitudes are generally effective predictors of intent
(Goles et al., 2008). Recent shoplifters were more accepting of
shoplifting behaviour, rationalising the economic benets, and seeing the risks of apprehension as low compared to persons who
have never or only occasionally shoplifted. Individual differences
in shoplifting have been conceptualized clinically, for example,
kleptomania as an expression of an impulse control disorder
(e.g., Dannon, 2002) Blanco et al. (2008) nd the offence related

0191-8869/$ - see front matter 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.014

Please cite this article in press as: Egan, V., & Taylor, D. Shoplifting, unethical consumer behaviour, and personality. Personality and Individual Differences
(2010), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.014

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2. Method

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2.1. Participants

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One hundred and fourteen participants were recruited for this

study, all of whom were normal shoppers, with 95 (83%) being recruited from a large DIY warehouse superstore caf, and the
remainder being smokers standing outside the shop before returning inside. No limits were placed on the age or gender of the
respondents other than they were over 16, and so had completed

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2.2. Apparatus

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Four questionnaires were administered to all participants:

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(1) The International Personality Item Pool (IPIP: Goldberg, 1999)

The IPIP is a public domain measure of the Big Five personality
dimensions; the version used in this study contained fty statements (IPIP-50), requiring the participants to indicate on a vepoint scale how accurately each statement applied to their own
personality. Ten statements corresponded to each personality trait
with some statements being reverse-keyed to avoid response set
bias. Goldberg (1999) reports the mean reliability for each of the
ve scales to be 0.84. The IPIP dimensions are very much equivalent to those assessed by the NEO-family of instruments, although
the Neuroticism dimension is inverted and called Emotional Stability, and the Openness dimension is re-named Intellect (Gow, Whiteman, Pattie, & Deary, 2005). To simplify terminology the current
study uses the term Emotional Stability (i.e., low N construct, denoted as ES) while Intellect/Openness construct is shortened to I.

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(2) The consumer ethical beliefs scale (CEBS: Muncy & Vitell, 1992)
The CEBS comprises 27 statements addressing different types of
unethical consumer behaviour. The CEBS has four subscales; proactively beneting at the expense of the seller (PROACT); passively
beneting at the expense of the seller (PASSIVE); deceptive practices (DECEIT), and no perception of harm or victim (NOHARM).
For the present study one item was omitted (using a coupon for
merchandise you did not buy) as this statement only applied to
US sample. Some wording was slightly altered for the comprehension of local participants. The CEBS had an alpha coefcient of 0.98.

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(3) The shoplifting attitudes scale (SAS: Tonglet, 2002)

The SAS comprises seven brief statements regarding how
respondents feel about shoplifting in general, to which participants
indicate on a ve-point scale how accurately each statement related to their own beliefs. After completion, scores are reversed
so participants who score highly on the various statements have
more accepting attitudes towards shoplifting than those with
low scores. The alpha coefcient for the SAS is 0.91.

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(4) Demographics
The nal part of the questionnaire assessed demographics,
requiring the participant to indicate their age, gender, occupation,
income, and educational attainment. To maximise anonymity participants responded to their age, education, occupation, and level
of income queries by endorsing the band that best described them.
This precaution was required as participants were asked to state
categorically that they had never shoplifted, shoplifted prior to
the last 12 months or shoplifted in the last 12 months and the
departmental ethics committee was unwilling to allow the study
to proceed unless one could not link such information (denoting
that the participant has committed a crime) with other potentially
identifying information.

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2.3. Design

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This study used a within-subjects correlational design, in which

all participants completed the same scales of personality, shoplift-

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compulsory education. Participants ranged in age from 16 to

80 years of age with a mean age of 38 (SD = 16.8, M:F = 63:51).
Most participants could be classed as skilled manual employees,
had left school after secondary education, and reported earning under 10,000 per year (US$ = 16 164 on 25/01/2010). As such, they
were a sample earning at or around the national minimal wage
for the UK.

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largely to impulse control disorders, which themselves relate

highly with offending. Few studies have examined general personality traits and shoplifting, instead using derivatives of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) such as the
California Psychological Inventory. Moore (1983) compared full
time college students convicted of shoplifting with undergraduates
who denied having ever shoplifted on the CPI and found no difference between the groups. Beck and Mcintyre (1977) also used the
MMPI to examine the relationship between personality and shoplifting, also comparing shoplifters and non-shoplifters in a student
population, dividing participants into those who had never shoplifted, had shoplifted once, and those who were repeat shoplifters.
Shoplifters were higher on psychopathic deviancy and mania
scales than non-shoplifters and likened to psychopaths. Those
who reported shoplifting just once only were found high on hypochondriasis, psychopathic deviancy and sex-role interests; such
males were also high on the paranoia scale.
It is easy to reconstrue aspects of the diagnostic terms used to
label shoplifters in terms of more standard theories of personality
whereby mania becomes extraversion (E), hypochondriasis becomes neuroticism (N, behaviourally the inverse of emotional stability), and psychopathic deviancy becomes psychoticism (P).
Sarasalo, Bergman, and Toth (1997) make this point when they observe that most shoplifters rarely reach caseness for kleptomania
apart from being impulsive and thrill-seeking. The Five Factor
Model of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992) has been repeatedly
used to assess anti-social behaviour, and neuroticism (N), agreeableness (A) and conscientiousness (C) are particularly associated
with criminal activity (Egan, 2009). Heaven (1996) found that
while openness (O) and extraversion (E) were not related to delinquency, low levels of A were strongly associated to an individual
participating in deviant behaviour, with C being intermediate in effect. Samuels et al. (2004) found the odds of a person having been
arrested increased in relation to their self-reported scores on measures of angry hostility, impulsiveness and excitement-seeking
dimensions, and lower scores on dimensions of trust, straightforwardness, compliance, modesty, dutifulness and deliberation (i.e.,
four of the six facets of A, and two of the facets of C).
Little research has been conducted into the relationship between personality and commonplace crimes such as unethical consumer behaviour or shoplifting. That which has emerged involves
samples of persons who have been detected, or who may be atypical to the general shopping public, for example, students or mentally disordered offenders. The current study examined an
opportunistic sample of normal shoppers in a large commercial
establishment, and studied the degree to which demographics
and personality correlated with a persons attitudes towards shoplifting and other aspects of unethical consumer behaviour. We
sought to clarify the degree to which normal personality characteristics related to shoplifting and unethical consumer behaviour,
anticipating that low emotional stability (ES, equivalent to high
N), low A and low C would be associated with such activity. We
did not actively seek gender differences, as our main recruitment
centre was a large DIY store and thus oriented to male shoppers.

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ing, and unethical consumer activity. Participants were divided

according to whether they had recently (in the past year) shoplifted, ever shoplifted (before the past year), or never shoplifted.

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2.4. Procedure

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Pearsons r correlations were used to measure the relationship

between personality and attitudes towards unethical consumer
behaviour and shoplifting. Whether being an active shoplifter reected particular personality traits or attitudes was tested by comparing mean scores across groups using one-way ANCOVA in order
to control for the inuence of age, followed by post-hoc LSD tests.
To see how the measures operated simultaneously and to control
for covariance between the personality subscales, a structural
equation model was calculated using AMOS (Arbuckle & Wothke,
2003).

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3. Results

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We found that of the cohort 68 persons had never shoplifted, 30

had shoplifted more than a year ago, and 16 had shoplifted in the
past year. To explore whether the CEBS subscales were necessary
for analysis, their correlation with the total CEBS score was calculated; correlations of CEBS with PROACT, PASSIVE, DECEIT, and NOHARM were 0.90, 0.90, 0.71 and 0.86, respectively (all P < .001;
corresponding alpha reliabilities were 0.89, 0.90, 0.89 and 0.73).
Given the reliability and high correlations with the overall scale total, it is questionable whether the subscales of the CEBS contribute
information beyond that provided by the overall scale score. For
this reason only the CEBS total score was used for subsequent
analyses.

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EC

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RR

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3.1. Correlations between personality, unethical consumer behaviour

and shoplifting

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3.2. Comparison of personality between shoplifting groups

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Having established that personality is strongly associated with

shoplifting and unethical consumer behaviour, we then examined
whether active shoplifters differed in demographics, personality
and attitudes from those who have desisted, as compared to those
who have never committed the offence. An examination of back-

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Table 1 presents simple correlations between personality,

unethical consumer behaviour, and shoplifting. We predicted personality in particular ES, A, and C would show signicant positive correlations with the SAS and CEBS. We found all ve
personality dimensions associated with unethical consumer
behaviour and shoplifting, with greater amounts of ES and E predicting the behaviour, as did lower levels of I, A, and C. However
our predicted direction for the ES and offending was in the wrong
direction; perhaps because you need to be emotionally calm when
committing a fraud or stealing to be effective. The SAS and CEBS
correlated at 0.42 (P < .001).

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ES
0.40

***

***

0.31
***

(0.77)

ES

0.36
0.21
*

SAS
0.29

**

.024
*

(0.87)

SAS

31.2
5.4

34.5
4.1

33.6
5.3

29.4
4.4

***

0.44
***

0.45
***

0.51
***

0.47

**

0.27
**

(0.73)

CEBS

0.23

0.41
***

0.46

0.39

***

***

0.27

0.32

**

***

0.41

0.27

***

**

(0.85)

0.42

11.3
6.0

(0.94)
75.5
22.4

***

31.4
4.2

n.s. = non-signicant.
P < .05.
**
P < .01.
***
P < .001 (all tests one-tailed).
*

ground demographics found that active shoplifters were signicantly younger than inactive or never-shoplifted groups
(v2(12) = 28.12, P < .001), and that all active shoplifters were male
(v2(2) = 16.39, P < .001). There was no difference between groups
in occupation, income, or education (v2(10, 6 and 6) = 12.93, 6.80
and 9.44, respectively, all n.s.). Comparison of means across the
self-report scales across groups was conducted using one-way ANCOVA to control for possible age effects. Means were compared
with the post-hoc LSD tests (Table 2). It was found that active
shoplifters were systematically different on all personality dimensions and attitudes to shoplifting from those who had previously
shoplifted but desisted, or had never shoplifted. There was no difference in personality or attitudes to shoplifting for those who had
previously shoplifted but desisted, or had never shoplifted. These
results suggest that active shoplifters are higher in ES (i.e., lower
in N) and E, and lower in I, A. and C. They were also more sympathetic to the concept of shoplifting, as measured by the SAS. The
only systematic difference between all groups, with all means
being signicantly different from the others was for the CEBS
(F(2,111) = 26.5, P < .001).

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3.3. A structural equation model of our ndings

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As is the case for the NEO-FFI (Egan, Deary, & Austin, 2000), we
found that the subscales of the IPIP-50 correlated with each other;
for example, Table 1 shows that E signicantly correlates with all
four other Big Five measures. To overcome this co-linearity and
to reduce the overlapping associations with personality traits confounding the dimensions of personality more specically involved
with shoplifting and unethical consumer behaviour, and taking
into account the effect of age as an inuence on personality and
anti-social behaviour, a structural equation model was constructed. This model was calculated using AMOS (Arbuckle &
Wothke, 2003). Fig. 1 presents these simultaneous relationships,
with only the signicant paths (as indicated by critical ratios in
the output) included. The circles are error variances for the measured variables. As a number of the personality measures correlated at the scale level, they were allowed to co-vary (as
indicated by double-headed arrows). A latent variable was created
from the SAS and CEBS to make an overall dishonest consumer
behaviour construct, simplifying a model which would be otherwise, due to the relatively small n, be unidentied. The model
was not signicant (v2(4) = 7.749, P = .10) and a variety of t statis-

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TE

223

.017
n.s.
(0.76)

CEBS
Mean
SD

2.5. Statistics

(0.84)

The four questionnaires were edited together to form one package comprising 84 questions. All participants signed a consent
form which was collected separately from the completed questionnaires. Most participants took approximately 15 min to complete
the scales. Once questionnaires were completed, they were placed
into an envelope and posted into a sealed box. This procedure further ensured that there was no way of revealing a respondents
identity to their responses.

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Table 1
Correlations (Pearsons r) between personality traits and attitudes towards unethical
consumer behaviour and shoplifting (n = 114). Alpha reliability on leading diagonal.

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Please cite this article in press as: Egan, V., & Taylor, D. Shoplifting, unethical consumer behaviour, and personality. Personality and Individual Differences
(2010), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.014

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Table 2
One way ANOVA across groups comparing persons who have never, previously shoplifted, and currently shoplift.

Shoplifted over one year ago

30

Shoplifted in past year

16

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

29.1
29.9
32.0
35.7
34.5
9.38
66.9

4.1
5.1
3.9
3.0
4.8
4.4
18.5

28.7
31.7
32.1
34.6
33.9
10.0
79.9

4.6
5.3
3.6
4.0
5.2
3.4
17.3

32.2*
35.8*
27.3*
29.6*
29.3*
21.6*
103.+

3.9
4.7
4.7
4.7
5.8
5.0
20.9

F(3,110)

Signicance P <

2.71
8.54
6.81
12.92
10.81
35.98
28.09

.001
.001
.001
.001
.001
.001
.001

ES
E
I
A
C
SAS
CEPS

Never shoplifted
68

e4

PR
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Means uncorrected for age.

Post-hoc LSD test: *Active shoplifters signicantly different from both previous shoplifters and those who have never shoplifted, no difference between those who have
previously shoplifted and those who have never shoplifted. +Signicant difference between each mean and the other means.

e5

.48

shoplift

unethcs

.55

.40

TE

-.33

Dishonest
consumer
behaviour

.26

Age

-.33

EC

.00

e7

.74
.54

-.51
-.42
.40

RR

.11

CO

UN

e6

e1

.16

.00

e2

e3

.27

-.30

-.12
2

Fig. 1. SEM showing pathways with signicant critical ratios. Model v (4) = 7.749, P = .10, GFI = 0.978, RMSEA = 0.09, CFI = 0.977, TuckerLewis Index = 0.912. Structural
equation model tting IPIP personality and age data to unethical consumer behavior and shoplifting scores (n = 114).

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tics indicated that the model tted the data well (GFI = 0.978,
RMSEA = 0.09, CFI = 0.977, TuckerLewis Index = 0.912). The model
presents pathways as standardized regression coefcients, all of
which are statistically signicant. The model shows that there
are direct pathways to this latent variable of dishonest behaviour
from A and C, whereas E and lower age feed into dishonest consumer behaviour via unethical consumer behaviour.

4. Discussion

313

The current study examined relationships between demographics and personality in relation to a persons attitudes towards shoplifting and other aspects of unethical consumer behaviour. We
found all dimensions of personality (as measured by the IPIP-50)
correlated with both shoplifting and the CEBS, and that attitudes

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Please cite this article in press as: Egan, V., & Taylor, D. Shoplifting, unethical consumer behaviour, and personality. Personality and Individual Differences
(2010), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.014

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ple; these persons were all male, and tended to be younger; such
persons have greater bravado. Even with age controlled-for, substantial differences remained between active shoplifters and nonactive or non-shoplifters. It might have been helpful to know about
other crimes committed by the participants to discern whether the
personality prole reected the generic criminal tendencies implied. However, the study was novel, the sample naturalistic, and
recruited in a real setting, and this is perhaps preferable to larger,
but otherwise ecologically less valid, studies such as those involving students assessed in lecture theatres. We sampled British participants who were not from an obvious forensic or clinical
population, few of whom were afuent. Of these, 40% had shoplifted, and 14% admitted to be currently active. Our study shows
that personality characteristics are a more important predictor of
attitudes to shoplifting and unethical consumer behaviour than
low socio-economic class itself, and that the underlying trait inuencing both types of offence is low A.

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to shoplifting were themselves associated with the CEBS. Though

low C and low A were associated negatively, ES was predicted positively perhaps because being calm is necessary for effective theft
or fraud. Correlations between the IPIP and the individual subscales of the CEBS found personality associated with passively beneting at the expense of the seller, proactively beneting at the
expense of the seller, and engaging in actual deceptive practice.
These associations were of such magnitude, a total score on the
shoplifting scale was taken as a summary measure as subscales
were superuous.
The sample was divided into having never shoplifted, having
shoplifted more than a year ago, or having shoplifted in the past
year. All currently active shoplifters in the sample were young
males who did not otherwise differ from the overall sample in their
level of education, occupation classication, or income. The actively shoplifting group were higher in ES (i.e., lower in N), higher
in E, and lower in I, A, and C than desisting shoplifters, or persons
who claimed to have never shoplifted. Active shoplifters were also
more positive about the act of shoplifting, and more willing to report engaging in other unethical consumer activity. To overcome
the considerable covariation in the data set, a SEM was calculated
which found that there are direct pathways to this latent variable
of dishonest behaviour from A and C, whereas E and lower age fed
into dishonest consumer behaviour via unethical consumer behaviour. These results suggest that normal personality dimensions
operate in conjunction with classical demographic inuences on
offending (younger age, lower income) to predict consumer crime.
How might these ndings be interpreted theoretically? Low levels of A and C are associated with self-reported delinquency, as
with many other kinds of anti-social behaviour (Miller & Lynam,
2001). Low IQ, younger age and low income are also important predictors of delinquent behaviour (Lynam, Moftt, & StouthamerLoeber, 1993). Some have suggested that 48% of all shoplifters
had traits associated with anti-social personality disorder (Moore,
1983). This view simply denotes that shoplifters have reliable indices of criminal history, and says more about their behaviour than
their personality or other individual differences. Unethical consumer activity had similar correlational patterns, the most striking
nding within the subscales of the CEBS being the lack of association with the no-harm dimension.
Victimless crimes are often used to excuse offending, but become victimful once one considers persons involved in the criminal
supply chains, and may be driven by thoughtlessness, which
underlies many criminal cognitions (Egan, McMurran, Richardson,
& Blair, 2000). Persons can be made thoughtful and yet choose to
disregard the suitable option, at which point they are making an
active decision to offend. The strategy by which individuals are
made aware of the costs of petty offending (increased costs to
the consumer via theft or fraud, denial of payment to the creator
of artistic products copied via illegal downloads, or exploiting the
vulnerable within the sex industry) builds on reducing the deindividuation of the victim of the crime (Hinduja, 2008) and is built
into interventions with sexual and violent offenders within restorative justice and structured cognitive-behavioural reasoning and
rehabilitation programmes (Hollin, 2000). The implementation of
such approaches with more ostensibly petty offenders is rather less
advanced. Greater awareness of neutralization strategies (for
example denial of harm or responsibility and the condemnation
of others instead of responsibility for ones own actions), and the
gradual way they emerge lends ideas as to how one might design
appropriate interventions for a variety of unethical consumer practices (Kieffer & Sloan, 2009; McCarthy & Stewart, 1998).
The present study had a relatively modest sample size and sampling was opportunistic, determined by the willingness of the
respondent to participate. Nevertheless, the study had the inadvertent fortune to recruit 16 active shoplifters within the overall sam-

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Please cite this article in press as: Egan, V., & Taylor, D. Shoplifting, unethical consumer behaviour, and personality. Personality and Individual Differences
(2010), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.014

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Lynam, D., Moftt, T., & Stouthamer-Loeber, M. (1993). Explaining the relation
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Please cite this article in press as: Egan, V., & Taylor, D. Shoplifting, unethical consumer behaviour, and personality. Personality and Individual Differences
(2010), doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.014