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© Mail OnlineWH Smith put the honesty boxes in shops in train stations and airports to allow shoppers to pay quickly

They were heralded as a demonstration of the travelling public's integrity.

But after introducing honesty boxes to help time-pressed customers quickly pay for their newspapers, retailer WH Smith has discovered some shoppers can no longer be trusted to pay the correct amount.

The company installed the boxes at around 60 train station kiosks and airport shops nationwide, after a trial at two branches showed sales had risen and checkout queues had shrunk dramatically - with no increase in shoplifting.

But the store has now removed around a third of the boxes, which were sited near store newspaper racks and near store exits for customers who needed to buy a newspaper or magazine in a hurry.

Staff at a shop in a London rail station said that the box there had been littered with paper, chewing gum and foreign coins.

One assistant called it a 'dishonesty box' and another said: 'You'd be surprised. People in suits. You turn your back ...'

The boxes - which initially looked more like dustbins than boxes - were the brainchild of an executive who had spent several years working in the US, where newspapers are often sold from vending boxes.

A WH Smith spokesman said it had honesty boxes in about 60 shops, but 'following some increasing concerns about the potential misuse of these facilities by a small minority, we have temporarily removed the honesty boxes from a small number of these locations'.

The spokesman said the company was considering moving the boxes to a 'more visible area within the store'.

Joan Harvey, a psychologist at Newcastle University, said that it was 'petty theft' but offenders justified not paying the correct amount.

She suggested that people had become less honest because they perceived big businesses to be greedy, adding: 'We change the goalposts of honesty to suit the cultural times we are living in.'

In a 2006 study of shoppers' behaviour a picture of a pair of eyes or a picture of flowers were placed above an honesty box during alternate time periods. Wildly differing sums of money were deposited in the box.

Dr Melissa Bateson, a behavioural biologist who led the study, said of it: 'When we had the picture of eyes on the wall it was nearly three times as much money. Eyes give people the feeling that they are being watched by other people.'