Trust on the Streets: A Natural Field Experiment on Newspaper Purchasing

Gerald Pruckner and Rupert Sausgruber

No 06-01, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: A publisher uses an honor-system for selling a newspaper in the street. The customers make payments into a cash-box, but can also just take the paper without paying. Payments are not monitored and highly anonymous; hence customers exhibit trustworthiness if they pay for the paper. We run a natural field experiment to identify motives behind payments. The experiment reveals that trustworthiness is based on a social rather than a legal norm. Additional survey questions serve to identify individual-specific components of trustworthiness. We find effects of gender, age, family status, church attendance, measures of reciprocity, social connectedness, and social risk.

Keywords: trust; trustworthiness; natural field experiment; survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2006-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-law and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0601

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