EER_2022_DATA

We design a natural field experiment to examine the impacts of norm-based interventions in enhancing honesty in a large decentralized marketplace fraught with contractual breaches owing to individual dishonesty. Sellers in fish markets of Kolkata, India, frequently cheat on the weight of the fish purchased via bilateral bargaining over price. We approach this marketplace and make two interventions: triggering a business norm driven by sellers’ adherence to a superstitious belief and enacting a norm-nudge in the form of moral suasion. Our design exploits a within-seller design whereby experimenter-buyers make scripted one-time purchases. We discover that the sellers behave strikingly honestly when the superstitious business norm is made salient. In contrast, moral suasion significantly decreases dishonesty, but its effect is markedly weaker than the superstition-based business norm. Our results suggest that direct normative appeals have the potential to make substantial headway to mitigate fraud in credence good markets where fraud is hard to detect due to information asymmetry.

本研究设计了一项自然田野实验（natural field experiment），以检验基于规范的干预措施对提升市场诚信水平的效果，实验场景为一个因个体不诚信行为频发契约违约的大型去中心化市场。研究选取印度加尔各答的鱼类批发市场作为实验场地，当地商贩在通过双边议价确定鱼价的交易中，常对售卖鱼类的称重环节实施欺诈。本研究针对该市场开展两项干预措施：一是触发由商贩遵循某一迷信信仰形成的商业规范，二是以道德劝导的形式实施规范助推（norm-nudge）。本实验采用商贩内实验设计，由作为实验者的买方按照预设脚本完成一次性购买行为。研究发现，当该基于迷信的商业规范被凸显时，商贩的诚信行为显著提升。与之形成对比的是，道德劝导虽能显著降低不诚信行为，但其干预效果远弱于基于迷信的商业规范干预。本研究结果表明，直接的规范性诉求有望在信任品（credence good）市场中取得实质性进展，以缓解欺诈行为——这类市场因信息不对称（information asymmetry）导致欺诈难以被察觉。