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Trust and reciprocity: extensions and robustness of triadic design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Giovanni Di Bartolomeo  and
Stefano Papa
Giovanni Di Bartolomeo*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Law, Faculty of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161 Rome, Italy
Stefano Papa*
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, University of Teramo, Teramo, Italy
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Abstract

Our paper reconsiders the triadic design proposed by Cox (Games and Economic Behavior 46:260–281, 2004) to identify trust and reciprocity in investment games. Specifically, we extend the design in two directions. First, we collect information on investors’ choices by using both the direct-response (as does Cox) and strategy methods. Using the latter, we are able to condition reciprocity on initial inequality, which is endogenous when investigating reciprocity. We demonstrate that the triadic design provides evidence for reciprocity once that initial inequality is considered. Second, we elicit expectations and test their coherence with the triadic outcomes. By examining the relationship between trust actions and expected gains, we analyze whether investors’ expectations are consistent with their behavior. Finally, we test for the existence of an emotional bias, i.e., whether expectation mismatches induce trustees to change actual choices from the planned ones.

Keywords

Other-regarding preferencesInvestment gameExpectationInequalityStrategy method
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 100 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-014-9428-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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