How to Identify Trust and Reciprocity: A Replication

L. Flóra Drucker (), Dániel Horn (), Sára Khayouti () and Hubert János Kiss ()
Additional contact information
L. Flóra Drucker: Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
Dániel Horn: Corvinus University Budapest; ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies
Sára Khayouti: University of Zürich
Hubert János Kiss: ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies; Corvinus University Budapest

No 2603, KRTK-KTI WORKING PAPERS from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

Abstract: We replicate the seminal three-games design introduced by Cox (2004) to disentangle trust and reciprocity from other-regarding preferences in the classic trust game. This study marks the first attempt to replicate these findings using a non-university sample. Our experiment was conducted online via Prolific, with participants based in the United States. In the original study, Cox (2004) found that senders in a treatment where receivers could not send back any money sent less than in the classical trust game, suggesting that sender behavior reflects a combination of other-regarding preferences and trust. This finding replicates in our experiment. However, the second finding does not replicate: receivers who automatically received money from senders did not send back significantly less than those in the classical trust game, where senders actively made the sending decision. Consequently, unlike Cox (2004), we find no clear distinction between other-regarding preferences and reciprocity.

Keywords: trust game; reciprocity; trust; other-regarding preferences; experimental economics; replication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D03 D64 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://kti.krtk.hu/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/KRTKKTIWP202603.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:has:discpr:2603

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in KRTK-KTI WORKING PAPERS from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nora Horvath ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).