Honesty in the digital age

Michel Maréchal, Alain Cohn and Tobias Gesche

No 280, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Modern communication technologies enable effcient exchange of information but often sacrifice direct human interaction inherent in more traditional forms of communication. This raises the question of whether the lack of personal interaction induces individuals to exploit informational asymmetries. We conducted two experiments with a total of 848 subjects to examine how human versus machine interaction influences cheating for financial gain. We find that individuals cheat about three times more when they interact with a machine rather than a person, regardless of whether the machine is equipped with human features. When interacting with a human, individuals are particularly reluctant to report unlikely and, therefore, suspicious outcomes, which is consistent with social image concerns. The second experiment shows that dishonest individuals prefer to interact with a machine when facing an opportunity to cheat. Our results suggest that human presence is key to mitigating dishonest behavior and that self-selection into communication channels can be used to screen for dishonest people.

Keywords: Honesty; cheating; human interaction; digitization; social image; screening (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C99 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02, Revised 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-ict, nep-neu and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Honesty in the Digital Age (2022)
Working Paper: Honesty in the Digital Age (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:280

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