Measuring People’s Trust

Abstract

Summary.We measure trust and trustworthiness in British society with a newly designed experiment using real monetary rewards and a sample of the British population. The study also asks the typical survey question that aims to measure trust, showing that it does not predict 'trust' as measured in the experiment. Overall, about 40% of people were willing to trust a stranger in our experiment, and their trust was rewarded half of the time. Analysis of variation in the trust behaviour in our survey suggests that trusting is more likely if people are older, their financial situation is either 'comfortable' or 'difficult' compared with 'doing alright' or 'just getting by', they are a homeowner or they are divorced, separated or never married compared with those who are married or cohabiting. Trustworthiness also is more likely among subjects who are divorced or separated relative to those who are married or cohabiting, and less likely among subjects who perceive their financial situation as 'just getting by' or 'difficult'. We also analyse the effect of attitudes towards risks on trust.

Identification of Social Interactions

“…Unfortunately, survey and experimental measures of trust frequently disagree. Glaeser, Laibson, Scheinkman, and Soutter (2000) and Ermisch, Gambetta, Laurie, Siedler, and Uhrig (2009) find that attitudinal questions about trust do not predict trusting behavior in trust games. Only Fehr, Fischbach, von Rosenbladt, Schupp, and Wagener (2002) reach a different conclusion.…”

Culture and cooperation

“…Gächter et al (2004) and Thöni et al (2009) show that, on the individual level and within a given culture, there is a connection between questionnaire items as used in the World Values Survey and cooperation in public goods games. Such a relationship has also been established in trust games, which also contain an element of cooperation (Ermisch et al 2009). …”

Does education promote social capital? Evidence from IV analysis and nonparametric-bound analysis

“…This operationalization of social trust has been widely used for more than four decades in empirical studies and surveys around the world. The survey question is controversial among some researchers for its abstract definition with respect to which "people" or what "stake" respondents have in mind and its difference with "trust" measured in experiment (Glaeser et al 2000;Ermisch et al 2009). …”