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While New Zealand, like Australia, prides itself as being more egalitarian than Britain, there is a degree of inverse snobbery known as the 'Tall Poppy Syndrome', in which people who are seen as (over)ambitious and having ideas above their station are cut down to size. This is also known as the 'Great Kiwi Clobbering Machine', and has prompted many of the country's best and brightest to emigrate.

New Zealand imports much of its cultural material from overseas, particularly from Britain or the United States. Most successful Hollywood films screen on New Zealand cinema screens and New Zealand Television shows a lot of British and American television programmes. It is somewhat ironic that some of these programmes are now made in New Zealand but receive their first screening elsewhere. The New Zealand cinematographic industry is becoming one of the country's major export enterprises, with several major motion pictures being filmed on New Zealand locations recently, including the highly acclaimed film adaptation of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" directed by the Kiwi Peter Jackson.

Although less obvious today, in the past team sports, particularly Rugby football, gambling on horse races, and sharing a beer after a hard day's work with some good friends or work mates have been significant images of New Zealand life. This predominantly working-class male cultural image has previously been so strong that it has overshadowed other, perhaps higher, cultural aspects of New Zealand society.

New Zealand was featured as the setting for "Middle Earth" in the renowned early 21st century trilogy of films based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books. It has brought an additional interest in tourism to the nation.

Immigration policy in New Zealand has often been controversial, with some politicians claiming that the pace of immigration has been too rapid for New Zealand to absorb, and that recent immigrants are having trouble adapting to the New Zealand society. This position is seen by others as a cynical appeal to xenophobic sentiment in order to gain votes near election time, and these views are not widely supported by the general population.

New Zealand comprises two main islands and a number of smaller islands. The South Island is the largest land mass, and is divided along its length by the Southern Alps, the highest peak of which is Mount Cook, at 3754 metres. There are 18 peaks of more than 3000 metres in the South Island. The North Island is less mountainous than the South, but is marked by volcanism. The tallest North Island mountain, Mount Ruapehu (2797 metres), is an active cone volcano.

Kiwi (usually capitalised) has been applied to and adopted by New Zealanders as a nickname for themselves and as an adjective for their culture. It originates from kiwi (usually uncapitalised), the Maori word for several species of flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. The plural form for New Zealanders is always Kiwis. The plural forms for the birds are the anglicised kiwis or, following the Maori language, kiwi without an s.

New Zealand is heavily dependent on trade—particularly in agricultural products—to drive growth, and it has been affected by global economic slowdowns and slumps in commodity prices. Since agricultural exports are highly sensitive to currency values and a large percentage of consumer goods are imported, any changes in the value of the New Zealand dollar has a strong impact on the economy.

The remoteness of many parts of New Zealand and the distance of the country from much of the developed world meant that things that were easily obtainable in other parts of the world were often not readily available locally. New Zealand has only recently experienced economic development outside farming, so traditionally, Kiwis are jacks-of-all-trades to some extent, willing to roll up their sleeves and have a go. Most highly industrialised countries produce experts trained in narrow fields of specialisation, but New Zealand professionals are often generalists as well. This reputation often makes New Zealanders uniquely valued employees in overseas organisations.

The usual climate throughout the country is mild, mostly cool temperate to warm temperate, with temperatures rarely falling below 0°C or rising above 30°C. Conditions vary from wet and cold in Southland and the West Coast of the South Island, where most of the country's rain falls, to subtropical in Northland. In Wellington the average minimum temperature in winter is 5.9°C and the average maximum temperature in summer is 20.3°C.