Impacts of urbanisation on trust: Evidence from an experiment in the field

Arbeitspapier

We conduct a field trust game under a natural experiment context to test the impacts of urbanisation on trust. We conjecture that urbanisation, defined in this context as the process of state-led rural-urban migration, contributes to a transformation of trust levels among co-villagers and towards outsiders. We test this conjecture in an experimental approach and more generally, examine whether the urbanisation will produce significant impacts on in-group trust and out-group trust. The research finds that urbanisation does not decrease significantly the trust towards co-villagers, meaning the in-group trust did not change statistically significantly. However, the trust towards outsiders does increase as a result of the state-led urbanisation. We also run a regression on the trust exhibited towards participants in the experiment and found the partial effect of whether they are co-villagers or outsiders weakens as a result of the urbanisation, and therefore conclude urbanisation decreases out-group discrimination in trust.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CeDEx Discussion Paper Series ; No. 2019-10

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Relation of Economics to Social Values ; Field Experiments ; Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration ; Economic Development: Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics
• Subject: Urbanisation ; Trust ; Field Experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Xu, Elvis Cheng
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): The University of Nottingham, Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics (CeDEx)
• (where): Nottingham
• (when): 2019

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/228357
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET