> Some retailers cite theft as a motivator for ditching the unstaffed tills. Customers may be more willing to simply swipe merchandise when using a self-service kiosk than they are when face-to-face with a human cashier. Some data shows retailers utilising self-checkout technology have loss rates more than twice the industry average.

This is hardly surprising and stores that sell high-value goods seem to just move checkout employees from the traditional checkout to a monitoring role at the self-checkout area. Home Depot now has self-checkouts where I live (usually a block of 4 per store), but there's always a few employees milling around the self-checkout area helping customers and probably keeping an eye out for theft.

There's just no sense of "social contract" when interacting with a self-checkout. It's much easier to rationalize theft as merely striking back at a large, faceless corporation when you're interacting with a machine.