A natural field experiment on newspaper purchasing

Gerald Pruckner and Rupert Sausgruber

Natural Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website

Abstract: A publisher uses an honor-system for selling a newspaper in the street. The customers make payments into a cash-box, but can also just take the paper without paying. Payments are not monitored and highly anonymous; hence customers exhibit trustworthiness if they pay for the paper. We run a natural field experiment to identify motives behind payments. The experiment reveals that trustworthiness is based on a social rather than a legal norm. Additional survey questions serve to identify individual-specific components of trustworthiness. We find effects of gender, age, family status, church attendance, measures of reciprocity, social connectedness, and social risk.

Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:feb:natura:00320

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