Guilt from Promise-Breaking and Trust in Markets for Expert Services – Theory and Experiment

Adrian Beck, Rudolf Kerschbamer, Jianying Qiu and Matthias Sutter
Additional contact information
Adrian Beck: Department of Economics, University of Innsbruck

No 436, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: We examine the influence of guilt and trust on the performance of credence goods markets. An expert can make a promise to a consumer first, whereupon the consumer can express her trust by paying an interaction price before the expert's provision and charging decisions. We argue that the expert's promise induces a commitment that triggers guilt if the promise is broken, and guilt is exacerbated by higher interaction prices. An experiment qualitatively confirms our predictions: (1) most experts make the predicted promise; (2) proper promises induce consumer-friendly behavior; and (3) higher interaction prices increase the commitment value of proper promises.

Keywords: Promises; Guilt; Trust; Credence Goods; Experts; Reciprocity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2010-03-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/2077/22132 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Guilt from Promise-Breaking and Trust in Markets for Expert Services - Theory and Experiment (2010)
Working Paper: Guilt from Promise-Breaking and Trust in Markets for Expert Services: Theory and Experiment (2010)
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:hhs:gunwpe:0436

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jessica Oscarsson ().