Trustworthy by design

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Geng, Sen; Guan, Menglong
• 署名单位: Xiamen University; University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.05.009
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 70-87
• 关键词: trust; trustworthiness; information design; Prosociality; Strategic sophistication

摘要

We explore theoretically and experimentally whether information design can be used by trustees as a signaling device to boost trusting acts. In our main setting, a trustee partially or fully decides a binary payoff allocation and designs an information structure, then a trustor decides whether to invest. In the control setting, information design is not available. In line with the standard equilibrium analysis, we find that introducing information design increases trustworthiness and trusting acts, and some trustees choose full trustworthiness with the most informative structure. We also find systematic behavioral deviations, including some trustees' choosing zero trustworthiness with the least informative structure and trustors' overtrusting in low informative structures. We finally provide a model of heterogeneity in prosociality and strategic sophistication, which rationalizes the experimental findings.& COPY; 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.