You have done it dozens of times. You spend a few minutes adding things to an online cart, feel a vague unease, and then close the tab without buying a single item.
Most people assume it is a sign of disorganized spending or indecision. Researchers at one of Israel’s leading business schools now believe it is something else entirely.
The number that reveals just how widespread the habit really is
Industry data, drawn from 50 studies, puts the average e-commerce cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, according to the Baymard Institute. The article’s stat is correct: on average, the e-commerce cart abandonment rate is over 70%.
That means more than seven out of ten shoppers who add products to their cart leave without completing the purchase.
Retailers have spent years blaming that gap on high shipping fees and complicated checkouts. A new study says those explanations only scratch the surface.
What the researchers actually measured inside those abandoned baskets
Researchers from the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University and George Washington University found that online shopping carts containing more indulgent products and fewer basic utilitarian products generate stronger feelings of guilt and wastefulness in the buyer, increasing the likelihood of cart abandonment. The study was conducted by Prof. Liat Hadar, Prof. Yael Steinhart, and Prof. Yaniv Shani from the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University, together with Dr. Gil Appel, an assistant professor of marketing at the George Washington University School of Business.
Their study found that carts containing more indulgent, less necessary items generate feelings of guilt and wastefulness in the buyer, increasing the likelihood of cart abandonment.
This was not a small effect. The more the cart looked like a wish list of treats, the harder it became for shoppers to mentally approve the purchase.
Prof. Liat Hadar concluded: “Our findings show that shopping cart abandonment does not stem only from technical considerations such as price or shipping, but from a deeper psychological process of purchase justification and guilt.” The study found that guilt creates hesitation and delay, which can eventually lead to complete cart abandonment.
Why the brain treats a full cart like a confession
Think about what lives in the average abandoned cart: a candle, a pair of shoes in a second color, a book you already own in hardback.
Consumer research has long found that online shoppers are frequently driven by emotional arousal and product novelty rather than rational evaluation, especially when interface design is built to reduce the effort of adding items. The TAU study hypothesizes that consumers are more likely to abandon carts containing a higher proportion of hedonic relative to utilitarian products, because such carts are perceived as more hedonic overall, increasing consumer guilt and the likelihood of abandonment.
That creates a strange loop. The same design features that make it easy to add items also make it harder to feel good about buying them.
If you are the kind of person who fills a cart and then hesitates, you are not failing at shopping. Your brain’s sense of financial fairness is doing exactly what it is built to do, flagging an imbalance before money leaves your account.
This connects to a broader shift in how Americans are managing everyday spending. Research on grocery shoppers found that most still prefer the physical aisle over digital checkout, and the guilt variable may be part of that pull.
The surprisingly smart fix hiding in plain sight
The Tel Aviv University researchers found that the inclusion of utilitarian products, such as basic consumer goods or functional items, creates a sense of balance and reduces guilt, even when the cart also contains indulgent items. Including utilitarian products is their central practical recommendation.
That is the real payoff of the study, published on February 4, 2026, in the Journal of Consumer Research : the person who abandons an all-indulgent cart is not broken. They simply need one practical anchor item to give the brain permission to proceed.
Add dish soap to a cart full of skincare. Add a phone cable to a cart full of clothing. The math does not change, but the feeling of justification does.
The researchers also found that recommendation systems may serve as an effective tool for reducing cart abandonment, and underscore the importance of incorporating hedonic value considerations into recommendation algorithms.
How to put this to work the next time you open a tab
The guilt-cart loop is especially active when shoppers are browsing without a plan, a behavior that connects directly to how buy-now-pay-later tools lower the emotional cost of checkout without touching the underlying hesitation.
The calm reframe is this: noticing guilt before you buy is a feature, not a flaw.
It is a built-in pause that keeps spending anchored to real priorities. The researchers’ own fix, adding one functional item to balance the basket, is essentially a way of talking to your own guilt in a language it understands.
You do not have to empty the cart. You just have to give it a reason.
