TRUST, RECIPROCITY AND SOCIAL DISTANCE IN CHINA: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

Charles Bram Cadsby (), Fei Song () and Yunyun Bi ()
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Fei Song: Ryerson University
Yunyun Bi: Taiping Asset Management; Shanghai, China.

No 809, Working Papers from University of Guelph, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate the effects of social distance on both actual trusting and reciprocity behavior and beliefs about such behavior. Some participants participated in two financially salient trust games to measure behavior, one with a classmate and the other with a student who was a stranger, while others drawn from the same population completed hypothetical surveys to gauge beliefs and intentions. Actual behavior and beliefs about both one’s own and others’ behavior were statistically indistinguishable. The results together corroborated the expected negative relationship between trust and social distance. However, reciprocity, while proportional to trust, was not responsive to social distance.

Keywords: Trust; reciprocity; guanxi; China; behavioral decision-making; social distance; belief. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gue:guelph:2008-9

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