What motivates people to trust and be trustworthy? Is trust solely "calculative," based on the expectation of trustworthiness, and trustworthiness only reciprocity? Employing a withinsubject design, we ran investment and dictator game experiments in Russia, South Africa and the United States. Additionally, we measured risk preferences and expectations of trustworthiness. Expectations of trustworthiness account for most of the variance in trust, but unconditional kindness also matters. Variance in trustworthiness is mainly accounted for by unconditional kindness, while reciprocity plays a comparatively small role. There exists some heterogeneity in motivation but people behave surprisingly similarly in the three countries studied.
A surprisingly large amount of otherregarding behavior is the common finding of experiments on bargaining, public goods, and trust. Elizabeth Hoffman et al. (hereafter, HMS) (1996) have provided an insightful analysis of why experimental results deviate from game theoretic predictions in dictator games. 1 The authors conclude that individuals' dispositional knowledge about social norms and reciprocity is activated by decreasing social distance even though the dictator game explicitly excludes reciprocal sanctioning possibilities by experimental design. We challenge this conclusion. While HMS (p. 654) define social distance to be ''the degree of reciprocity that subjects believe exist within a social interaction,'' we argue that social distance influences otherregardedness independent of any norms of social exchange. When social distance decreases, the ''other'' is no longer some unknown individual from some anonymous crowd but becomes an ''identifiable victim'' (Thomas C. Schelling 1968). 2 In order to discriminate between reciprocity-based and identifiabilitybased other-regardedness, we also used the dictator game and varied the degree of social distance.
ABSTRACT. Participatory scenario planning (PSP) is an increasingly popular tool in place-based environmental research for evaluating alternative futures of social-ecological systems. Although a range of guidelines on PSP methods are available in the scientific and grey literature, there is a need to reflect on existing practices and their appropriate application for different objectives and contexts at the local scale, as well as on their potential perceived outcomes. We contribute to theoretical and empirical frameworks by analyzing how and why researchers assess social-ecological systems using place-based PSP, hence facilitating the appropriate uptake of such scenario tools in the future. We analyzed 23 PSP case studies conducted by the authors in a wide range of social-ecological settings by exploring seven aspects: (1) the context; (2) the original motivations and objectives; (3) the methodological approach; (4) the process; (5) the content of the scenarios; (6) the outputs of the research; and (7) the monitoring and evaluation of the PSP process. This was complemented by a reflection on strengths and weaknesses of using PSP for the place-based social-ecological research. We conclude that the application of PSP, particularly when tailored to shared objectives between local people and researchers, has enriched environmental management and scientific research through building common understanding and fostering learning about future planning of social-ecological systems. However, PSP still requires greater systematic monitoring and evaluation to assess its impact on the promotion of collective action for transitions to sustainability and the adaptation to global environmental change and its challenges.
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Due to betrayal aversion, people take risks less willingly when the agent of uncertainty is another person rather than nature. Individuals in six countries (Brazil, China, Oman, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States) confronted a binary-choice trust game or a risky decision offering the same payoffs and probabilities. Risk acceptance was calibrated by asking individuals their "minimum acceptable probability" (MAP) for securing the high payoff that would make them willing to accept the risky rather than the sure payoff. People's MAPs are generally higher when another person, rather than nature, determines the outcome. This indicates betrayal aversion. (JEL C72, D81, Z13)
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