Building Trust—One Gift at a Time

Maroš Servátka, Steven Tucker and Radovan Vadovic ()

Games, 2011, vol. 2, issue 4, 1-22

Abstract: This paper reports an experiment evaluating the effect of gift giving on building trust. We have nested our explorations in the standard version of the investment game. Our gift treatment includes a dictator stage in which the trustee decides whether to give a gift to the trustor before both of them proceed to play the investment game. We observe that in such case the majority of trustees offer their endowment to trustors. Consequently, receiving a gift significantly increases the amounts sent by trustors when controlling for the differences in payoffs created by it. Trustees are, however, not better off by giving a gift as the increase in the amount sent by trustors is not large enough to offset the trustees’ loss associated with the cost of giving a gift.

Keywords: experimental economics; gift giving; investment game; trust; trustworthiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Building Trust One Gift at a Time (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jgames:v:2:y:2011:i:4:p:412-433:d:14167

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