A Nation-Wide Laboratory : Examining Trust and Trustworthiness by Integrating Behavioral Experiments into Representative Surveys

Typically, laboratory experiments suffer from homogeneous subject pools and self-selectionbiases. The usefulness of survey data is limited by measurement error and by thequestionability of their behavioral relevance. Here we present a method integrating interactiveexperiments and representative surveys thereby overcoming crucial weaknesses of bothapproaches. One of the major advantages of our approach is that it allows for the integrationof experiments, which require interaction among the participants, with a survey of noninteractingrespondents in a smooth and inexpensive way. We illustrate the power of ourapproach with the analysis of trust and trustworthiness in Germany by combiningrepresentative survey data with representative behavioral data from a social dilemmaexperiment. We identify which survey questions intended to elicit people's trust correlate wellwith behaviorally exhibited trust in the experiment. People above the age of 65, highly skilledworkers and people living in bigger households exhibit less trusting behavior. Foreigncitizens, Catholics and people favoring the Social Democratic Party or the ChristianDemocratic Party exhibit more trust. People above the age of 65 and those in good healthbehave more trustworthy or more altruistically, respectively. People below the age of 35, theunemployed and people who say they are in favor of none of the political parties behave lesstrustworthy or less altruistically, respectively