Measuring people’s trust

Publication type

ISER Working Paper Series

Series Number

2007-32

Series

ISER Working Paper Series

Authors

Publication date

January 10, 2008

Abstract:

We measure trust and trustworthiness in British society with an experiment using real monetary rewards and a sample of the British population. The study also asks the most 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 one-half of the time. Analysis of variation in the trust behaviour in our survey suggests that trust is more likely if people are older, their financial situation is ‘comfortable’, they are a homeowner, or they are divorced or separated. Trustworthiness is less likely if a person’s financial situation is perceived by them as ‘just getting by’ or difficult.

Subject

Notes

working paper

Paper download  

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• Measuring people’s trust

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  2. Diego Gambetta
  3. Heather Laurie
  4. Thomas Siedler
  5. S.C. Noah Uhrig

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