What makes us find free stuff irresistible?

University of Canterbury professor of marketing Ekant Veer is well-versed in retailers’ tactics and consumer behaviour, but he also loves a freebie.

He once ended up with 20 kilograms of frozen salmon for free from a random person passing by at Auckland Airport.

“I took it without reservation. I'm like, 'perfect'. Stuck it in the back of the car without thinking about what the hell I'm going to do with 20 kilos of salmon.”

Saving money makes us feel like we’re ‘winning’, he says, but we often don’t consider the time and effort involved.

“[At a supermarket], I saw a lady just chipping ice off the fish because it would save her a couple of cents.

“All I could think of is if you looked at the time spent to save that five cents that she probably saved, it makes no economic sense. But it probably made her feel better about what she's doing.

“So we value cash more than our time because we don't quantify our time as easily as we quantify our cash.”

So why are we drawn in to free food? Who is really winning in a giveaway? And why do some people hoard things left outside homes?

Veer says collecting things for free can be a bit of a personality trait, almost like gambling, where hoarding can erode personal well-being.

“Treasure hunting is still within the psyche of every human to say, 'I feel like I've accomplished something and I've done it for free'.

“We have valued efficiency and effectiveness of spending so much that when you get something for free, even if it doesn't do the job that you need it to, you still feel like you've won because if you spent money and it broke down, that's way worse than getting something for free and it not working.”

Louise Garbett runs a Facebook ‘freecycling’ group in Auckland for household items. She says more than half a million items have found a new home via the invite-only group over the past seven years.

There are money saving and eco-friendly motivations for taking things other people are getting rid of, she says. If you can get a party costume that’s only been used once for free, then would you still waste resources on getting a new one?

Garbett says there are a lot of social workers are in the group, collecting items useful for families in need. But she also doesn’t mind the occasional person taking something and selling it to make some cash.

It’s not uncommon for office-based kaimahi to offer free fruit from their home garden, home baking or leftovers from a catered event.

Some people place an emphasis on not letting food go to waste because they’ve been raised that way, Veer says, so there’s an inclination to taking up the offer.

"Again, this comes down to emotional attachment, the historical sense. Some people do it for everything, some people just do it for products or product categories and things like that."

But some take freebies without considering whether they need it, he says, and they ultimately end up in the bin.

Garbett has also been running a Presbyterian Support referral-based foodbank for the past two years. She says being able to distinguish those in need from the “small percentage” who try to mooch off donations is an ongoing issue.

“My ethos is if someone's trying to cheat the system for short shelf-life food then they probably do need it.”

Whether it’s a free coffee you’ve 'earned' after buying 10 others, a kitchen product to thank you for your loyalty at the supermarket or a free washing machine for switching providers – it’s all marketing, Veer says.

Retailers pull customers in with a sense of loyalty under the guise of being utilitarian, he says.

“If I go to my mom's place and I didn't eat all my food, I'm in trouble, you know. But if I go to New World and I don't pick up the extra bottle of wine, I shouldn't feel in trouble for that.

“But we still have the same psychology sometimes, because if I did, I could get an extra token and then I'll be one-tenth of the way onto a Smeg spoon.”

Those with young kids in the whānau might feel pressured to shop at places where they give away toys or collectibles catered to children, he says.

There’s also the ‘endowment effect’, where you feel like you must finish what you started, he says.

“You will see, as the [Disney packs] campaign comes to a close, Trade Me and Facebook marketplace will light up with people saying, ‘I will trade you this. I will swap this'. 'I've got a complete book. If you want to take the book, it's going to cost you 50 bucks’.

“People will just go for that sort of thing when it makes no flipping sense economically.

“But it makes a lot of sense emotionally. It makes a lot of sense from a whanaungatanga perspective and just saying we're a family and we've managed to do this together.”

In a cost-of-living crisis, freebies or perceived freebies become even more effective, Veer says.

“It is to encourage and empower people to feel a sense of connection and ability to feel like, ‘hey, there's a bit of reciprocity now between us because I'm doing something for you and you're doing something for me’.

“As the consumer, you might get some things for free, but you're spending way more than you need to in order to get that free thing.”

Typical habitual purchasers are the prey of these schemes, he says.

“If you had to think about every single dollar that you spent, if you had to think about every single thing you did at a supermarket, you would be overwhelmed.

“So the supermarkets, the retailers play on that in order to say, now feel better because on aisle three, we've got someone giving you some crackers. Now at eight, someone is giving you a little sip of wine if you want.

“It becomes an experience that you enjoy, not just a routinised objective part of your daily being.”