We conducted a series of large-scale field experiments across the globe to examine how financial incentives influence rates of civic honesty.Corresponding author: Email: adcohnatumich.edu (A.C.); michel.marechalatecon.uzh.ch (M.A.M.) These authors contributed equally to this work.They distributed more than 17,000 wallets containing various sums of money in 355 cities across 40 countries.In contrast to what rationalist theories of economics predict, citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained more money.
The Five Rituals Of Wealth Series Of LargeThe findings also reveal a high level of civic honesty across nations. Science, this issue p. Abstract Civic honesty is essential to social capital and economic development but is often in conflict with material self-interest. We examine the trade-off between honesty and self-interest using field experiments in 355 cities spanning 40 countries around the globe. In these experiments, we turned in more than 17,000 lost wallets containing varying amounts of money at public and private institutions and measured whether recipients contacted the owners to return the wallets. ![]() The Five Rituals Of Wealth Professional Economists WereNeither nonexperts nor professional economists were able to predict this result. Additional data suggest that our main findings can be explained by a combination of altruistic concerns and an aversion to viewing oneself as a thief, both of which increase with the material benefits of dishonesty. Honest behavior is a central feature of economic and social life ( 1, 2 ). Without honesty, promises are broken, contracts go unenforced, taxes remain unpaid, and governments become corrupt. Such breaches of honesty are costly to individuals, organizations, and entire societies. For example, losses due to tax evasion in the United States are estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars each year ( 3 ), and the cost of corruption and other illicit financial flows in developing countries has been estimated at up to US1.3 trillion annuallyan amount roughly equal in size to the gross domestic product of Australia ( 4, 5 ). In this Report, we examine how acts of civic honesty, where people voluntarily refrain from opportunistic behavior, are affected by monetary incentives to act otherwise. Although there is robust experimental literature on the conditions that give rise to honest behavior ( 6 11 ), little is known about how material incentives affect civic honesty, particularly in field settings. Understanding the relationship between civic honesty and material incentives is not only practically relevant but also theoretically important. Theories of honesty make different predictions about the role of material incentives. ![]() Models of human behavior that incorporate altruistic or other-regarding preferences also predict that dishonesty will rise with increasing incentives, as self-interest virtually always dominates over concerns for the welfare of otherswe care about others but not as much as we care about ourselves ( 13 15 ). As a result, self-interest will play an increasingly prominent role in behavior as the material incentives for dishonesty grow. The Five Rituals Of Wealth Update Their SelfPsychological models based on self-image maintenance predict that people will cheat for profit so long as their behavior does not require them to negatively update their self-concept ( 7, 16 ). However, it is unclear ex ante whether self-image concerns will become more or less important as the incentives for dishonesty increase and also what form that relationship will take. A further complication is that most of the experimental literature on honest behavior involves modest financial stakes, has been conducted in laboratory settings (where people understand their behavior is being observed), and tends to rely on populations from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies ( 17 ).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |