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An experiment on deception, reputation and trust

ABSTRACT: An experiment is designed to shed light on how deception works. The experiment involves a twenty period sender/receiver game in which period 5 has more weight than other periods. In each period, the informed sender communicates about the realized state, the receiver then reports a belief about the state before being informed whether the sender lied. Throughout the interaction, a receiver is matched with the same sender who is either malevolent with an objective opposed to the receiver or benevolent always telling the truth. The main findings are: (1) in several variants (differing in the weight of the key period and the share of benevolent senders), the deceptive tactic in which malevolent senders tell the truth up to the key period and then lie at the key period is used roughly 25% of the time, (2) the deceptive tactic brings higher expected payoff than other observed strategies, and (3) a majority of receivers do not show cautiousness at the key period when no lie was made before. These observations do not match the predictions of the Sequential Equilibrium and can be organized using the analogy-based sequential equilibrium (ABSE) in which three quarters of subjects reason coarsely.

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The online version of this article (10.1007/s10683-020-09681-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

SUBMITTER: Ettinger D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8550209 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundVirtual stores can be used to identify influences on consumer shopping behavior. Deception is one technique that may be used to attempt to increase the realism of virtual stores.ObjectiveThe objective of the experiment was to test whether the purchasing behavior of participants in a virtual shopping task varied based on whether they were told that they would receive the products they selected in a virtual convenience store (a form of deception) or not.MethodsWe recruited a US national sample of 402 adult current smokers by email from an online panel of survey participants. They completed a fully automated randomized virtual shopping experiment with a US $15 or US $20 budget in a Web-based virtual convenience store. We told a random half of participants that they would receive the products they chose in the virtual store or the cash equivalent (intervention condition), and the other random half simply to conduct a shopping task (control condition). We tested for differences in demographics, tobacco use behaviors, and in-store purchases (outcome variable, assessed by questionnaire) by experimental condition.ResultsThe characteristics of the participants (398/402, 99.0% with complete data) were comparable across conditions except that the intervention group contained slightly more female participants (103/197, 52.3%) than the control group (84/201, 41.8%; P=.04). We did not find any other significant differences in any other demographic variables or tobacco use, or in virtual store shopping behaviors, including purchasing any tobacco (P=.44); purchasing cigarettes (P=.16), e-cigarettes (P=.54), cigars (P=.98), or smokeless tobacco (P=.72); amount spent overall (P=.63) or on tobacco (P=.66); percentage of budget spent overall (P=.84) or on tobacco (P=.74); number of total items (P=.64) and tobacco items purchased (P=.54); or total time spent in the store (P=.07).ConclusionsWe found that telling participants that they will receive the products they select in a virtual store did not influence their purchases. This finding suggests that deception may not affect consumer behavior and, as a result, may not be necessary in virtual shopping experiments.

Project description:BackgroundThe use of consumer wearable health devices for fitness tracking has seen an upward trend across the globe. Previous studies have shown that trust is an important factor in the adoption and use of new technologies. However, little is known about the influence of organizational reputation and trust on the intention to use wearable health devices.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the mediating role of organizational reputation and trust in the intention to use wearable health devices and to examine the extent to which the country of residence influenced the effect of organizational reputation on consumers' trust in and intention to use wearable health devices.MethodsWe conducted a cross-country survey with participants from Kenya and South Africa using a Google Forms questionnaire derived from previously validated items. A series of mediation regression analyses were carried out using the PROCESS macro with the bootstrap CI procedure. A one-way, between-group multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was also used to determine the key factors that distinguish Kenyans and South Africans in their intention to use wearable health devices.ResultsA total of 232 questionnaire responses were collected. The results revealed that organizational reputation significantly mediates the relationship between trust propensity and trust, with an indirect effect of 0.22 (95% CI 0.143-0.309). Organizational reputation also plays a significant direct role in the intention to use a wearable health device, with a direct effect of 0.32 (95% CI 0.175-0.483). This role is regardless of participants' country of residence. Furthermore, there is a significant mediating effect of trust on the relationship between trust propensity and the intention to use a wearable health device, with an indirect effect of 0.26 (95% CI 0.172-0.349); between perceived security and the intention to use a wearable health device, with an indirect effect of 0.36 (95% CI 0.255-0.461); and between perceived privacy and the intention to use a wearable health device, with an indirect effect of 0.42 (95% CI 0.282-0.557). The MANOVA test shows statistically significant differences in all variables for both groups, with the exception of organizational reputation where there is no significant difference between the two cohorts.ConclusionsOrganizational reputation has a significant direct influence on participants' trust in and the intention to use a wearable health device irrespective of their country of residence. Even in the presence of perceived security and perceived privacy, trust has a significant mediating effect on the intention to use a wearable health device.

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An experiment on deception, reputation and trust

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