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An Experimental Approach to Comparing Trust in Pastoral and Non-Pastoral Australia

Ryan McAllister () and Andrew Reeson

No 2007-09, Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion (SEED) Working Paper Series from CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems

Abstract: It is generally held that rural Australians are more cooperative in character than their urban counterparts. To explore one aspect of this notion, we conducted an experiment which compared trust and trustworthiness among a sample of Australian senior high school students which included students with both pastoral and non-pastoral backgrounds. While student behaviour is unlikely to mimic adult behaviour, any significant differences between pastoral and non-pastoral students would suggest differences do exist between the social norms that guide pastoral and non-pastoral communities. We repeated our experiment at three different schools containing students from both pastoral and non-pastoral backgrounds, allowing us to draw comparisons. In total 78 students participated. Our experiments were based on similar experiments that have been applied across a range of contexts internationally (trust game/investment game). We did not find evidence of differences between students with pastoral and non-pastoral backgrounds, either in the level of trust in others or in trustworthiness, though our methods probably have a bias towards this conclusion. Our results concurred with other studies in showing that social distance is an important determinant of the level of cooperation.

Keywords: rural urban relations; economic behaviour; culture; arid zones; semiarid zones; pastoral society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C91 P25 R00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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