信任 , 互利 , 干部身份

We designed an investment experiment with college students as subjects to examine the degree of trustworthiness of leaders in China. Using a doubleblind setting of the experiment, we compare the difference in the amount of paying back between the leader trustee and nonleader trustee. We built a second experiment that the identity information about the leader trustee is unilaterally provided to trustor, and tested whether or not the decision making of the trustor and trustee changes. Using a third experiment in which the identity information about the leader trustee is common knowledge, we test the effect of this information on the degree of reciprocity of leaders. We find as follows: First, in a blind setting, there is no significant difference in the decision making between the leaders and nonleaders as trustee. Second, the exposed information about the identity of the leader trustee either in a unilateral information setting or common knowledge setting induces more trust of trustor. Third, in the setting that his/her identity is common knowledge, a leader trustee significant increases the degree of reciprocity. We conclude that leaders are not instinctively more trustworthy. However, they can reciprocate more given some information revealed. Our research strongly supports the necessity of an institutional environment that policy makings are transparent and are supervised by public.