Why Don’t People Return Their Shopping Carts? A (Somewhat) Scientific Investigation

Behavioral Scientist ^ | 19 Nov, 2025 | Hannah B. Waldfogel

[P-Marlowe]

I worked as an assistant manager for a drug store in my younger days. Our store was in a poor neighborhood and once a week we’d go out with a truck and drive through the neighborhood and pick up abandoned shopping carts. In one year we lost about 50 carts.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Back when I lived in Florida, I used a laundromat down there that is owned by a retire couple. The husband, formerly an airline mechanic, would tell me that successful people returned their shopping cars, while unsuccessful people left them abandoned. That’s a general rule, of course, with exceptions on both sides, as far as I can tell.

[Jamestown1630]

:-)

[CFW]

I’ll not only return my cart, but I’ll also reorganize the carts in the return corral so that the smaller carts are on one side and the larger ones on the other. Does that make me weird?

[Raycpa]

My wife teaches me simple obvious things. One of those is to park nearest the cart return not nearest to the store.

[Migraine]

I’d think that cart-narking would suffer from a very poor risk/benefit quotient.

[Apparatchik]

I think most people who don’t return their carts do so because they don’t see how the action benefits them in that moment. Seeing other carts left in the open only reinforces that. It’s a form of selfishness and disregard for societal norms. Look how many folks wear pajamas to the store or flip flops to sit-down restaurants. Establishing and enforcing dress codes would do wonders once they see they can’t get on a plane or be seated for a meal.

[Justa]

“I’ll grab carts to take into the store.?

So it’s YOU who removes the shopping carts from the Disabled Parking area making me stumble into the store to get one?

Cart-Karens cause me grief and anxiety. Without a cart to steady myself I know one day I will fall on my way into the store.

Like the kids using the electric carts as go-carts in the store draining the batteries. I’ve never had a working one which I didn’t have to leave in an aisle when it died.

Heartless

[ClearCase_guy]

“I never return them because we live in a racist society and I am tired of being oppressed.”

— Michelle Obama

[T.B. Yoits]

I agree for the most part that it's mostly self-centered behavior but there are also other factors.

Parking lots are large and their aren't enough cart collection areas. These stores don't want to hire staff to collect them so they instead set up the lots without collection areas other than directly in front of the building.

"They pay people to do this" is not just and excuse and an attempt at Shifting Responsibility. Stores previously paid cart collectors. For some high school kids, it was part of one of a few jobs they could get. Not long ago, staff, or usually kids looking to earn spending money, would take your groceries to your car. I suspect the lawyers and the accountants nixed that.

I know one particular supermarket where there are no cart collection areas in the parking lot and the one in front of the supermarket is uphill on a significant slope. You could see where customers started pushing their cart back uphill but then gave up. Old people in particular had difficulty with that one.

The cart collection area is full because customers didn't have the strength to push their carts to fold them into the others. Or, annoyingly, the supermarket uses two or three different cart styles that don't fold into each other. Why roll your cart to an overfilled collection area that has carts lined up out the back and blocking the flow of cars in the lot?

The cart collection area is already in use:

[Apparatchik]

No I do it, too. Random acts of kindness daily.

[Dilbert San Diego]

My observation is that shoppers at Trader Joe’s are very good at returning shopping carts. Walmart shoppers tend to be lazy about that.

[bjc]

Actually I like this study in that it at least attempts to ask the subjects why they did what they did and documented it. IMO, far too many psychology experiments do this.
It is not clear to me that the categories presented help answer the research question: “Why don’t people return their shopping carts?” Many of the categories could be coded “how the subject avoided answering a question”.

[frogjerk]

BINGO! Now you deserve the thousands of dollars in research and time wasted by these people on a simple reason. If you are not taught to be courteous and society doesn’t reinforce that virtue it will not manifest itself magically.

[Justa]

“My complaint is that they never have cart return stations near the handicapped parking spaces.”

It’s a feature, not a fault. Ppl with mobility issues need a cart when they get out of their car to assist balance and walking. Please don’t return carts from handicap parking spaces.

[Joe 6-pack]

"I’ll not only return my cart, but I’ll also reorganize the carts in the return corral so that the smaller carts are on one side and the larger ones on the other. Does that make me weird?"

Not weird, maybe just OCD. I dated a young lady like that in college. She was an English Lit major. If you looked in her desk or backpack, her pens and highlighters were always sorted in ROYGBIV order. When we'd eat together, either in the college DFAC, or in a restaurant on a date, she would always eat the items on her plate in clockwise order.

[T.B. Yoits]

...disregard for societal norms. Look how many folks wear pajamas to the store or flip flops to sit-down restaurants. Establishing and enforcing dress codes would do wonders once they see they can’t get on a plane or be seated for a meal.

Establishing and enforcing dress codes gave us a society where everyone wore costumes, hiding their true selves. It was a holdover of the Victorian facade.

I for one appreciate having people show me right up front who they think they are.

[No name given]

Obviously.

[FirstFlaBn]

I wish this psychologist would test FReepers too lazy or entitled to mash ‘Preview’ before posting. For those too self important to show this courtesy to readers, ‘Preview’ includes spellcheck with a red squiggly line underneath misspelled words. I’d bet there would be a high correlation with the shopping cart offenders.

[libh8er]

Why spend that extra time and effort returning the cart when you could hurry back to your car and start browsing your phone again(after that painful pause when you had to....shop ) while two other vehicles wait in the hopes you will exit the parking spot.