Description: Department Seminar: Becca Taylor (University of Sydney)

Location: 368A Heady Hall

Contact Person: David Hennessy

Title: Does Automation Reduce Stigma? The Effect of Self-checkout Register Adoption on Purchasing Decisions

Abstract: By removing human cashiers, self-checkout registers may alter feelings of embarrassment experienced by customers. Using high-frequency scanner data from supermarkets in the Washington D.C. area with staggered adoption of self-checkout, we conduct event study analyses on consumer purchases. We find large but noisy effects of self-checkout adoption on sales of some stigmatized items. Moreover, we show stigmatized items are much more likely to be purchased at self-checkout than at cashier registers, especially condoms and pregnancy tests. We estimate customers are willing to pay 8.6 cents in additional time cost for the privacy of purchasing condoms and pregnancy tests at self-checkout.