What is trustworthiness and what drives it?

James Cox, Rudolf Kerschbamer and Daniel Neururer ()

Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck

Abstract: This paper reports the results of experiments designed to isolate the impact of various combinations of the following motives on trustworthiness: (i) unconditional other-regarding preferences - like altruism, inequality aversion, quasi-maximin, etc.; (ii) deal-responsiveness - reacting to actions that allow for a mutual improvement by adopting behavior that implies a mutual improvement; (iii) gift-responsiveness - reacting to choices that allow the trustee to obtain an improvement by adopting actions that benefit the trustor; and (iv) vulnerability-responsiveness - reacting to the vulnerability of the trustor by adopting actions that do not hurt the trustor. Our results indicate that - besides unconditional other-regarding preferences - vulnerability-responsiveness is an important determinant of trustworthiness even in cases where the vulnerability of the trustor does not come together with a gift to the trustee. Motivated by our empirical findings we provide formal definitions of trust and trustworthiness based on revealed willingness to accept vulnerability and the response to it.

Keywords: trustworthiness; trust; trust game; investment game; deal-responsiveness; gift-responsiveness; vulnerability-responsiveness; generosity; reciprocity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C91 D63 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.uibk.ac.at/downloads/c4041030/wpaper/2014-23.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: What is trustworthiness and what drives it? (2016)
Working Paper: What is Trustworthiness and What Drives It? (2005)
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:inn:wpaper:2014-23

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Judith Courian ().