Culture, Identity, and Structure in Social Exchange: A Web-based Trust Experiment in the United States and Japan

Kuwabara, Ko; Willer, Robb; Macy, Michael W.; Mashima, Rie; Terai, Shigeru; Yamagishi, Toshio

doi:10.1177/019027250707000412

Cited by 60 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…Thus, they cannot answer how trust may be affected when individuals from different countries interact with each other. Only a handful of studies examine the role of trust in inter-country interactions (Yamagishi et al 2005, Kuwabara et al 2007). We advance the experimental methodology to enable rigorous investigation of trust in real-time cross-country interactions in addition to within-country interactions.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To this end, we employ an experimental design that allows us to study trust and trustworthiness in strategic information sharing among geographically distant and culturally heterogeneous individuals. Cross-country experiments are rare even in the vast field of behavioral and experimental economics because conducting such experiments has been technically difficult and costly (Kuwabara et al 2007). Our experimental design and protocol advance the experimental methodology to enable research on trust, and more broadly, social preferences, in real-time crosscountry interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trust, Trustworthiness, and Information Sharing in Supply Chains Bridging China and the United States

2014

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Whether and how trust and trustworthiness differ between a collectivist society, e.g., China, and an individualistic one, e.g., the U.S., generate much ongoing scientific debate and bear significant practical values for managing cross-country transactions. We experimentally investigate how supply chain members' countries of origin -China versus the U.S. -affect trust, trustworthiness, and strategic information sharing behavior in a cross-country supply chain. We consider a two-tier supply chain in which the upstream supplier solicits demand forecast information from the retailer to plan production; but the retailer has an incentive to manipulate her forecast to ensure abundant supply. The levels of trust and trustworthiness in the supply chain and supplier's capability to determine the optimal production quantity affect the efficacy of forecast sharing and the resulting profits. We develop an experimental design to disentangle these three aspects and to allow for real-time interactions between geographically distant and culturally heterogeneous participants. We observe that, when there is no prospect for long-term interactions, our Chinese participants consistently exhibit lower spontaneous trust and trustworthiness than their U.S. counterparts do. We quantify the differences in trust and trustworthiness between the two countries, and the resulting impact on supply chain efficiency. We also show that Chinese individuals exhibit higher spontaneous trust towards U.S. partners than Chinese ones, primarily because they perceive that individuals from the U.S. are more trusting and trustworthy in general.This positive perception towards U.S. people is indeed consistent with the U.S. participants' behavior in forecast sharing. In addition, we quantify that a Chinese supply chain enjoys a larger efficiency gain from repeated interactions than a U.S. one does, as the prospect of building a long-term relationship successfully sustains trust and trustworthiness by Chinese partners. We advocate that companies can reinforce the positive perception of Westerners held by the Chinese population and commit to long-term relationships to encourage trust by Chinese partners. Finally, we also demonstrate that both populations exhibit similar pull-to-center bias when solving a decision problem under uncertainty (i.e., the newsvendor problem).*

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trust, Trustworthiness, and Information Sharing in Supply Chains Bridging China and the United States

2014

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“…While prior work testing Yamagishi's arguments about the relationship between collectivism/individualism and trust typically compared Japan and the United States (e.g., Kuwabara et al 2007;Yamagishi 1988), some recent work broadened this focus. Using a sample of 30 European nations, Gheorghiu, Vignoles, and Smith (2009) found that trust was higher in individualist versus collectivist countries, suggesting that the finding generalizes beyond the United States/Japan comparison.…”

Section: Cooperation In Social Dilemmasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Culture, Cooperation, and the General Welfare

Berigan

Irwin

2011

Soc Psychol Q

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Solutions to social dilemmas require cooperation. Given that there are commonly multiple avenues for cooperation, sometimes social dilemmas require coordination of strategies in addition to sufficient cooperation to be successful. This study examines one social dilemma where such coordination is necessary: supporting the general welfare. Using World Values Survey data from 33 nations, we compare active membership in charitable organizations versus attitudes toward government welfare programs as examples of two different types of cooperation. We argue that culture influences the form of cooperation a group adopts via the amount of trust it generates. Specifically, individualist cultures promote relatively high levels of trust, which produce first-order cooperation (here, involvement in charitable organizations). Collectivist cultures generate relatively low trust levels, facilitating second-order cooperation (here, greater support for government welfare programs). Findings support our arguments and thus suggest that culture, mediated by trust, shapes individuals' perceptions about creating and sustaining public goods.

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“…Future research may also consider differences in individual personality, including general attitudes toward trust (Simpson & McGrimmon 2008) as well as variations across cultures (Cook et al, 2005;Kuwabara et al, 2007) in attitudes and behavior toward risk and uncertainty. These may affect how individuals respond to different types and sources of reputation information.…”

Section: Future Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internet Exchange and Forms of Trust

Anthony

Kitts

Masone

et al. 2010

Trust and Technology in a Ubiquitous Modern Environment

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All economic exchange entails some uncertainty, but uncertainty is exacerbated in periods of social change that disrupt conventional patterns and modes of exchange. The increasing reliance on the Internet as a medium for exchange has greatly increased uncertainty, raising particular problems of trust between parties. In this study, we examine how information that may reduce uncertainty affects individuals' trust in online exchange. Within an experimental marketplace, we present subjects with a series of simulated vendors along with ratings of the vendors' transaction security. Specifically, we manipulate the source of reputation information (interpersonal vs. institutional sources) and the content of information (rating of reliability vs. capability for engaging in secure transactions) for those vendors, then assess subjects' tendency to trust in vendors. We find that although subjects are responsive to the item price and vendor rating, and subjects are more likely to trust vendors when given reputation information from institutional sources, they do not differentiate capability from reliability information in evaluating vendors in this context.

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Culture, Identity, and Structure in Social Exchange: A Web-based Trust Experiment in the United States and Japan

Cited by 60 publications

References 35 publications

Trust, Trustworthiness, and Information Sharing in Supply Chains Bridging China and the United States

Trust, Trustworthiness, and Information Sharing in Supply Chains Bridging China and the United States

Culture, Cooperation, and the General Welfare

Internet Exchange and Forms of Trust

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