On pledging one's trustworthiness through gifts: an experimental inquiry

Giuseppe Danese () and Luigi Mittone

No 2001, CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: The anthropological literature provides many instances of tokens donated in the form of a gift to woo potential trade partners, or to strengthen ties to existing partners. We study the role of gifts, as pledges of one’s trustworthiness, through an experiment modeled on the trust game. We vary whether the trustee can send a token before the trustor decides whether to transfer money; whether one of the tokens is socially positioned; and whether the participants interact repeatedly or are randomly re-matched in each round. Participants in a fixed matching achieve comparable levels of trust and trustworthiness in the studies with and without tokens. In the studies with a token, trustors send significantly more points when the trustee has sent a token. A token is used more sparingly after it is socially positioned. We conclude that for institutional design, the time horizon of the relationship might be at least as important as the ability to make pledges.

Keywords: Pledges; Gifts; Marcel Mauss; Trust Game; Tokens (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B52 C92 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-ceel.economia.unitn.it/papers/papero20_01.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trn:utwpce:2001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marco Tecilla ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).