Trust, voluntary cooperation, and socio-economic background:: survey and experimental evidence

We report survey and experimental evidence on trust and voluntary cooperation from more than 630 non-student and student participants in rural and urban Russia. Our subjects have a diverse socioeconomic background that we relate to the answers of a survey on trust attitudes and to contribution behavior in a one-shot public goods game. We find that the socio-economic background affects trust attitudes, but we find no separate influence of socio-economic variables on cooperative behavior in a one-shot public goods experiment. However, cooperation is significantly positively correlated to trust toward strangers and beliefs about the fairness and helpfulness of others. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.