Trust, risk, and institutions: experimental evidence from a community of firms in Kenya

IF 2.3 2区经济学 Q2 ECONOMICS

Journal of Economic Psychology Pub Date : 2025-08-09 DOI:10.1016/j.joep.2025.102834

Maria Porter , Ahmed Salim Nuhu , Eduardo Nakasone , Mywish K. Maredia

引用次数: 0

Abstract

We study whether personal relationships amongst firms can foster trust as a mechanism to overcome challenging business environments. In partnership with a community of small- and medium-scale enterprises in Kenya, we implemented trust games in a framed field experiment. Our main finding is that outside enforcement of exchanges most effectively increases amounts sent to recipients. A secondary finding is that active members of the business association may be more trusting of fellow members when identities are to be revealed compared to when decisions remain anonymous. Our findings suggest that while association-based networking can perhaps partially offset an adverse business environment, in trust-related decision-making, such informal mechanisms do not fully compensate for lack of outside enforcement that can result from weak institutions.

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信任、风险和制度：来自肯尼亚企业社区的实验证据

我们研究公司之间的人际关系是否可以促进信任作为一种克服具有挑战性的商业环境的机制。我们与肯尼亚的一个中小型企业社区合作，在一个有框架的实地实验中实施了信任游戏。我们的主要发现是，交易所的外部强制执行最有效地增加了寄给收款人的金额。第二个发现是，与匿名决策相比，当身份被披露时，商业协会的活跃成员可能更信任其他成员。我们的研究结果表明，虽然基于关联的网络可能会部分抵消不利的商业环境，但在与信任相关的决策中，这种非正式机制并不能完全补偿制度薄弱导致的外部强制措施的缺乏。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Economic Psychology Multiple-

CiteScore

5.20

自引率

31.40%

发文量

审稿时长

63 days

期刊介绍： The Journal aims to present research that will improve understanding of behavioral, in particular psychological, aspects of economic phenomena and processes. The Journal seeks to be a channel for the increased interest in using behavioral science methods for the study of economic behavior, and so to contribute to better solutions of societal problems, by stimulating new approaches and new theorizing about economic affairs. Economic psychology as a discipline studies the psychological mechanisms that underlie economic behavior. It deals with preferences, judgments, choices, economic interaction, and factors influencing these, as well as the consequences of judgements and decisions for economic processes and phenomena. This includes the impact of economic institutions upon human behavior and well-being. Studies in economic psychology may relate to different levels of aggregation, from the household and the individual consumer to the macro level of whole nations. Economic behavior in connection with inflation, unemployment, taxation, economic development, as well as consumer information and economic behavior in the market place are thus among the fields of interest. The journal also encourages submissions dealing with social interaction in economic contexts, like bargaining, negotiation, or group decision-making. The Journal of Economic Psychology contains: (a) novel reports of empirical (including: experimental) research on economic behavior; (b) replications studies; (c) assessments of the state of the art in economic psychology; (d) articles providing a theoretical perspective or a frame of reference for the study of economic behavior; (e) articles explaining the implications of theoretical developments for practical applications; (f) book reviews; (g) announcements of meetings, conferences and seminars.