Civic Honesty Around the Globe (2019) [pdf]

davetannenbaum.github.io

20 pointscwaffles4 comments

Why isn't Japan on the chart? I'd expect the wallets to be returned there almost 100% of the time.

Here's a quote from patio11 to illustrate my point:

> [Japan] is a place where I could take my daughter to lost-and-found to ask about an acorn, knowing that someone would return an acorn, knowing that someone would clearly expect a lost acorn to be returned and therefore ask.

Source: https://x.com/patio11/status/1179388295479996418 (Oct 2, 2019)

I can here to post the same. It literally happened to us in Japan. My wife left her purse with a lot of cash, credit cards, and her passport at a cafe. She was panicking while I reassured her it’s going to be returned. Sure enough after our long walk back, the store clerk recognized us immediately and gave us the purse. Everything was there.

This has been studied and the results comparing Tokyo and NYC are directionally what you'd expect:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=316119

As an American, that's a pretty embarrassing, if not unexpected, result.

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