Microfoundations of Social Capital

Arbeitspapier

We show that the standard trust question routinely used in social capital research is importantly related to cooperation behavior and we provide evidence on the microfoundation of this relation. We run a large-scale public goods experiment over the internet in Denmark using a design that enables us to disentangle preferences for cooperation from beliefs about others’ cooperation. We find that the standard trust question is a proxy for cooperation preferences rather than beliefs about others’ cooperation. Moreover, we show that the “fairness question”, a recently proposed alternative to the standard trust question, is also related to cooperation behavior but operates through beliefs rather than preferences.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: NRN Working Paper, NRN: The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State ; No. 1019

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Public Goods ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Noncooperative Games
• Subject: Social capital ; Trust ; Fairness ; Public goods ; Cooperation ; Experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Thöni, Christian ; Tyran, Jean-Robert ; Wengström, Erik
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Johannes Kepler University Linz, NRN - The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State
• (where): Linz
• (when): 2010

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/115058
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET