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Looks like they picked the 5 largest cities in each country listed. I'd be far more interested to see the disparity between large cities, smaller cities, and smaller towns/villages for each country.

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Look into the Supplementary Information linked at the end, which addresses some of your concerns and enables you to design your own experiment.

Indeed, for instance: Canada is a rather diverse country and I think it would be safe to expect a different experience in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver; but an enormous difference between those and the rural areas of each province.

This rural/urban divide is probably a dynamic worth exploring regardless of region. The relative anonymity of large urban areas provides very different incentives toward maintaining personal integrity than in a small rural town where reputation damage can result in real and permanent losses.

I'm not arguing rural is better than urban; on the contrary, damage caused by idle gossip can permanently ostracize a person for reasons beyond their control and result in long term economic and social damage. The dynamic of smaller groups vs large anonymous groups is one worth exploring, in my humble opinion.

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