Ermisch, John, Diego Gambetta, Heather Laurie, Thomas
Siedler and S.C.Noah Uhrig. 2009. Meausring People’s Trust. Journal of Royal Statistical
Society A 172, part4: 749-569.
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
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