ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Unraveling controversies over civic honesty measurement: An extended field replication in China.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Simulated responses from large language models are weak proxies for human economic preferences across 74 countries.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- The effect of incidental name similarity on favoritism in the Chinese financial market.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A computational account of multiple motives guiding context-dependent prosocial behavior.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Randomized studies in China show that studying and promoting civic honesty needs to consider local norms.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Predicting honest behavior based on Eysenck personality traits and gender: an explainable machine learning study using SHAP analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The component and structure of interpersonal trust.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Reply to Tannenbaum et al.: Constructive dialogue advancing research on civic honesty.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- A closer look at civic honesty in collectivist cultures.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Unraveling controversies over civic honesty measurement: An extended field replication in China.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cohn et al. (2019) conducted a wallet drop experiment in 40 countries to measure "civic honesty around the globe," which has received worldwide attention but also sparked controversies over using the email response rate as the sole metric of civic honesty. Relying on the lone measurement may overlook cultural differences in behaviors that demonstrate civic honesty. To investigate this issue, we conducted an extended replication study in China, utilizing email response and wallet recovery to assess civic honesty. We found a significantly higher level of civic honesty in China, as measured by the wallet recovery rate, than reported in the original study, while email response rates remained similar. To resolve the divergent results, we introduce a cultural dimension, individualism versus collectivism, to study civic honesty across diverse cultures. We hypothesize that cultural differences in individualism and collectivism could influence how individuals prioritize actions when handling a lost wallet, such as contacting the wallet owner or safeguarding the wallet. In reanalyzing Cohn et al.'s data, we found that email response rates were inversely related to collectivism indices at the country level. However, our replication study in China demonstrated that the likelihood of wallet recovery was positively correlated with collectivism indicators at the provincial level. Consequently, relying solely on email response rates to gauge civic honesty in cross-country comparisons may neglect the vital individualism versus collectivism dimension. Our study not only helps reconcile the controversy surrounding Cohn et al.'s influential field experiment but also furnishes a fresh cultural perspective to evaluate civic honesty.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.