Understanding Trust Articles uri icon

publication date

  • December 2013

start page

  • 1313

end page

  • 1332

issue

  • 573

volume

  • 123

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0013-0133

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1468-0297

abstract

  • The World Values Survey (WVS) question on trust has been widely used to study the economic effect of trust. Recent work, however, questions its validity as an accurate measure of trust by showing that it is not correlated with the sender's behaviour in the Berg etal. trust game. What measure then should we trust to measure trust? In this article, we argue that the sender's behaviour in a trust game is driven both by beliefs and by preferences. In contrast, WVS-like measures capture mostly the belief-based component of a trust game.