IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aah/aarhec/2015-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the interpretation of World Values Survey trust question - global expectations vs. local beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Ritwik Banerjee

    (Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University, Denmark)

Abstract

How should we interpret the World Values Survey (WVS) trust question? We conduct an experiment in India - a low trust country, to correlate the WVS trust question with trust decisions in an incentivized Trust Game. Evidence supports findings from one strand of the fractured literature - the WVS trust question captures expectations about others’ trustworthiness, though not always. We show that WVS trust question correlates with globally determined stable expectations but does not correlate with short term locally determined fluctuations in beliefs about trustworthiness. One implication of our study is that survey based methods may not be used to measure contextualized beliefs.

Suggested Citation

  • Ritwik Banerjee, 2015. "On the interpretation of World Values Survey trust question - global expectations vs. local beliefs," Economics Working Papers 2015-19, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    • Handle: RePEc:aah:aarhec:2015-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.econ.au.dk/repec/afn/wp/15/wp15_19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Naef, Michael & Schupp, Jürgen, 2009. "Measuring Trust: Experiments and Surveys in Contrast and Combination," IZA Discussion Papers 4087, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Ritwik Banerjee, 2016. "On the interpretation of bribery in a laboratory corruption game: moral frames and social norms," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(1), pages 240-267, March.
    3. Jordi Brandts & Gary Charness, 2011. "The strategy versus the direct-response method: a first survey of experimental comparisons," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(3), pages 375-398, September.
    4. Peiró-Palomino, Jesús & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2013. "Can trust effects on development be generalized? A response by quantile," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 377-390.
    5. Burnham, Terence & McCabe, Kevin & Smith, Vernon L., 2000. "Friend-or-foe intentionality priming in an extensive form trust game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 57-73, September.
    6. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    7. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher & Bernhard von Rosenbladt & J�rgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, "undated". "A Nation-Wide Laboratory: Examining trust and trustworthiness by integrating behavioral experiments into representative surveys," IEW - Working Papers 141, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    8. Rosaz, Julie & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2012. "Lies and biased evaluation: A real-effort experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 537-549.
    9. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2009. "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1095-1131.
    10. Mariana Blanco & Dirk Engelmann & Alexander Koch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2010. "Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(4), pages 412-438, December.
    11. Horváth, Roman, 2013. "Does trust promote growth?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 777-788.
    12. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2004. "The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 526-556, June.
    13. Sangnier, Marc, 2013. "Does trust favor macroeconomic stability?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 653-668.
    14. Abigail Barr & Danila Serra, 2009. "The effects of externalities and framing on bribery in a petty corruption experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(4), pages 488-503, December.
    15. Yu, Shu & Beugelsdijk, Sjoerd & de Haan, Jakob, 2015. "Trade, trust and the rule of law," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 102-115.
    16. Valeria Maggian & Marie Claire Villeval, 2016. "Social preferences and lying aversion in children," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(3), pages 663-685, September.
    17. Thöni, Christian & Tyran, Jean-Robert & Wengström, Erik, 2012. "Microfoundations of social capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(7-8), pages 635-643.
    18. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2008. "Trusting the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2557-2600, December.
    19. Bellemare, Charles & Kroger, Sabine, 2007. "On representative social capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 183-202, January.
    20. Banerjee, Ritwik, 2016. "Corruption, norm violation and decay in social capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 14-27.
    21. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    22. Cameron, Lisa & Chaudhuri, Ananish & Erkal, Nisvan & Gangadharan, Lata, 2009. "Propensities to engage in and punish corrupt behavior: Experimental evidence from Australia, India, Indonesia and Singapore," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 843-851, August.
    23. Paola Sapienza & Anna Toldra‐Simats & Luigi Zingales, 2013. "Understanding Trust," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(12), pages 1313-1332, December.
    24. Abbink, Klaus & Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Gangadharan, Lata & Jain, Tarun, 2014. "Letting the briber go free: An experiment on mitigating harassment bribes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 17-28.
    25. Lazzarini, S. G. & Madalozzo, R. C & Artes, R. & Siqueira, J. O., 2004. "Measuring trust: An experiment in Brazil," Insper Working Papers wpe_42, Insper Working Paper, Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa.
    26. Drouvelis, Michalis & Metcalfe, Robert & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2010. "Priming Cooperation in Social Dilemma Games," IZA Discussion Papers 4963, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    27. Georgarakos, Dimitris & Fürth, Sven, 2015. "Household repayment behavior: The role of social capital and institutional, political, and religious beliefs," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 249-265.
    28. Hillman, Arye L., 2010. "Expressive behavior in economics and politics," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 403-418, December.
    29. Vivi Alatas & Lisa Cameron & Ananish Chaudhuri & Nisvan Erkal & Lata Gangadharan, 2009. "Subject pool effects in a corruption experiment: A comparison of Indonesian public servants and Indonesian students," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(1), pages 113-132, March.
    30. Ulrike Malmendier & Stefan Nagel, 2011. "Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk Taking?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 373-416.
    31. Klaus Abbink & Heike Hennig-Schmidt, 2006. "Neutral versus loaded instructions in a bribery experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(2), pages 103-121, June.
    32. Johnson, Noel D. & Mislin, Alexandra, 2012. "How much should we trust the World Values Survey trust question?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 210-212.
    33. Falk, Armin & Zehnder, Christian, 2013. "A city-wide experiment on trust discrimination," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 15-27.
    34. Thomas Buser & Anna Dreber, 2016. "The Flipside of Comparative Payment Schemes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(9), pages 2626-2638, September.
    35. Berg Joyce & Dickhaut John & McCabe Kevin, 1995. "Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 122-142, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Héloise Cloléry & Guillaume Hollard & Fabien Perez & Inès Picard, 2022. "Should we trust measures of trust?," Working Papers 2022-13, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    2. Jalan, Akanksha & Matkovskyy, Roman & Urquhart, Andrew & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2023. "The role of interpersonal trust in cryptocurrency adoption," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    3. Markussen, Thomas & Sharma, Smriti & Singhal, Saurabh & Tarp, Finn, 2021. "Inequality, institutions and cooperation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    4. Vojtěch Bartoš & Ian Levely & Vojtech Bartos, 2023. "Measuring Social Preferences in Developing Economies," CESifo Working Paper Series 10744, CESifo.
    5. Abhijit Ramalingam & Brock V. Stoddard, 2021. "Does reducing inequality increase cooperation?​," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2021_022, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.
    6. Frans van Winden, 2021. "The Informational Affective Tie Mechanism: On the Role of Uncertainty, Context, and Attention in Caring," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 21-012/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    7. Abhijit Ramalingam & Brock V. Stoddard, 2020. "Old habits die hard: The experience of inequality and persistence of low cooperation," Working Papers 20-07, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    8. Seng Boon Lim & Jalaluddin Abdul Malek & Tan Yigitcanlar, 2021. "Post-Materialist Values of Smart City Societies: International Comparison of Public Values for Good Enough Governance," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-13, August.
    9. Yao Zhang & Yushu Zhang & Yan Wu & Frank Krueger, 2023. "Default Matters in Trust and Reciprocity," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(1), pages 1-21, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Banerjee, Ritwik, 2016. "Corruption, norm violation and decay in social capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 14-27.
    2. Jalan, Akanksha & Matkovskyy, Roman & Urquhart, Andrew & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2023. "The role of interpersonal trust in cryptocurrency adoption," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    3. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2014. "Trust, but verify? When trustworthiness is observable only through (costly) monitoring," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 20, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.
    4. Kim, Jeongbin & Putterman, Louis & Zhang, Xinyi, 2022. "Trust, Beliefs and Cooperation: Excavating a Foundation of Strong Economies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    5. Armand, Alex & Coutts, Alexander & Vicente, Pedro C. & Vilela, Inês, 2023. "Measuring corruption in the field using behavioral games," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    6. Costa-Gomes, Miguel A. & Huck, Steffen & Weizsäcker, Georg, 2014. "Beliefs and actions in the trust game: Creating instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 298-309.
    7. Martin G. Kocher, 2015. "How Trust in Social Dilemmas Evolves with Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 5447, CESifo.
    8. Fabrice Murtin & Lara Fleischer & Vincent Siegerink & Arnstein Aassve & Yann Algan & Romina Boarini & Santiago Gonzalez & Zsuzsanna Lonti & Ulrich Schmidt & Gianluca Grimalda & Rafael Hortala Vallve &, 2018. "Trust and its determinants," Sciences Po publications 89, Sciences Po.
      • Fabrice Murtin & Lara Fleischer & Vincent Siegerink & Arnstein Aassve & Yann Algan & Romina Boarini & Santiago Gonzalez & Zsuzsanna Lonti & Ulrich Schmidt & Gianluca Grimalda & Rafael Hortala Vallve &, 2018. "Trust and its determinants," SciencePo Working papers hal-03596480, HAL.
      • Fabrice Murtin & Lara Fleischer & Vincent Siegerink & Arnstein Aassve & Yann Algan & Romina Boarini & Santiago Gonzalez & Zsuzsanna Lonti & Ulrich Schmidt & Gianluca Grimalda & Rafael Hortala Vallve &, 2018. "Trust and its determinants," Working Papers hal-03596480, HAL.
    9. Lesmeister, Simon & Limbach, Peter & Goergen, Marc, 2022. "Trust and monitoring," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/h44c7ona088fb5o9b5dq3nt9u is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Thöni, Christian & Tyran, Jean-Robert & Wengström, Erik, 2012. "Microfoundations of social capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(7-8), pages 635-643.
    12. Fabrice Murtin & Lara Fleischer & Vincent Siegerink & Arnstein Aassve & Yann Algan & Romina Boarini & Santiago Gonzalez & Zsuzsanna Lonti & Ulrich Schmidt & Gianluca Grimalda & Rafael Hortala Vallve &, 2018. "Trust and its determinants," Sciences Po publications 89, Sciences Po.
      • Fabrice Murtin & Lara Fleischer & Vincent Siegerink & Arnstein Aassve & Yann Algan & Romina Boarini & Santiago Gonzalez & Zsuzsanna Lonti & Ulrich Schmidt & Gianluca Grimalda & Rafael Hortala Vallve &, 2018. "Trust and its determinants," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03596480, HAL.
      • Fabrice Murtin & Lara Fleischer & Vincent Siegerink & Arnstein Aassve & Yann Algan & Romina Boarini & Santiago Gonzalez & Zsuzsanna Lonti & Ulrich Schmidt & Gianluca Grimalda & Rafael Hortala Vallve &, 2018. "Trust and its determinants," Working Papers hal-03596480, HAL.
    13. Finseraas, Henning & Hanson, Torbjørn & Johnsen, Åshild A. & Kotsadam, Andreas & Torsvik, Gaute, 2019. "Trust, ethnic diversity, and personal contact: A field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 72-84.
    14. In Do Hwang, 2017. "Which Type of Trust Matters?:Interpersonal vs. Institutional vs. Political Trust," Working Papers 2017-15, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.
    15. Johnson, Noel D. & Mislin, Alexandra A., 2011. "Trust games: A meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 865-889.
    16. Limbach, Peter & Rau, P. Raghavendra & Schürmann, Henrik, 2023. "The decline of trust across the U.S. finance industry," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 324-344.
    17. Bai, Liang & Wu, Lingwei, 2020. "Political movement and trust formation: Evidence from the Cultural Revolution (1966–76)," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    18. Naveh Eskinazi & Miki Malul & Mosi Rosenboim & Tal Shavit, 2023. "Do you still trust me? An experimental study on the effect of uncertainty, complexity and anchors in a trust game," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(2), pages 892-905, March.
    19. Limbach, Peter & Rau, P. Raghavendra & Schürmann, Henrik, 2020. "The Death of Trust Across the U.S. Finance Industry," CFR Working Papers 20-05, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), revised 2020.
    20. Giuseppe Albanese & Guido de Blasio & Paolo Sestito, 2017. "Trust, risk and time preferences: evidence from survey data," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 64(4), pages 367-388, December.
    21. Amore, Mario Daniele & Epure, Mircea, 2021. "Riding out of a financial crisis: The joint effect of trust and corporate ownership," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 92-109.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corruption; Social Capital; Social Norm; Trust Games;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aah:aarhec:2015-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.au.dk/afn/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.