Credit Scores Promote Trustworthiness Better than Deposits: An Experiment based on Consideration of Future Consequences

Replacing deposits with credit scores is being applied in an increasing number of services, including bicycle rental, apartment rental and hotel accommodation services. Whether and why individuals’ trustworthiness levels improve after the implementation of credit scores needs to be resolved. This paper establishes a bicycle rental experimental situation, obtains trustworthiness data from the subjects, and explores the interaction between different constraint conditions and the subjects’ consideration of future consequences (CFC). The results indicate that the trustworthiness of the deposit group is lower than that of the credit score group. For high CFC individuals, there are no significant differences in the trustworthiness of the control group, deposit group and credit score group. For low CFC individuals who prefer current benefits, the trustworthiness of the deposit group is lower than that of the credit score group and control group when the latter two groups show no significant differences. Our findings demonstrate that credit scores promote trustworthiness better than deposits and that individuals who pay more attention to current benefits are more affected. Keywords—deposit free; punishment effect; trustworthiness; consideration of future consequences