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Type	Working Paper
Scope	Discipline-based scholarship
Title	Honesty in the digital age
Organization Unit	Department of Economics (Florian Scheuer)
Authors	Michel Maréchal Alain Cohn Tobias Gesche
Language	English
Institution	University of Zurich
Series Name	Working paper series / Department of Economics
Number	280
ISSN	1664-7041
Number of Pages	35
Date	2020
Abstract Text	Modern communication technologies enable effcient exchange of information but often sacrifice direct human interaction inherent in more traditional forms of communication. This raises the question of whether the lack of personal interaction induces individuals to exploit informational asymmetries. We conducted two experiments with a total of 848 subjects to examine how human versus machine interaction influences cheating for financial gain. We find that individuals cheat about three times more when they interact with a machine rather than a person, regardless of whether the machine is equipped with human features. When interacting with a human, individuals are particularly reluctant to report unlikely and, therefore, suspicious outcomes, which is consistent with social image concerns. The second experiment shows that dishonest individuals prefer to interact with a machine when facing an opportunity to cheat. Our results suggest that human presence is key to mitigating dishonest behavior and that self-selection into communication channels can be used to screen for dishonest people.
Free access at	Official URL
Official URL	https://www.econ.uzh.ch/en/research/workingpapers.html?paper-id=959
Related URLs	http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3198158 http://www.econ.uzh.ch/static/workingpapers.php https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3198158 https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/215348/
Digital Object Identifier	10.2139/ssrn.3198158
Other Identification Number	Alternativer Titel der Reihe: CESifo Working Paper No. 6996; merlin-id:16220
PDF File	Download from ZORA
Export	BibTeX EP3 XML (ZORA)
Keywords	Honesty, cheating, human interaction, digitization, social image, screening, Ehrlichkeit, Asymmetrische Information, Betrug, Digitalisierung, Interaktion, Experiment
Additional Information	Revised version. Auch publiziert als CESifo Working Paper No. 6996 (10.2139/ssrn.3198158).