Insights

“If you find a lost wallet in public that contains the owner’s email address, will you contact the owner by email?” A few years ago, Alain Cohn from the University of Michigan, the US, and several other scholars conducted relevant research in 40 countries around the world to measure civic honesty. The research shows that China ranks last in such “Honesty Ranking,” which caused a lot of discussion in all walks of life and led many scholars to conduct more in-depth extensive research. However, what is the reason behind the research result? What are the key factors that determine the civic honesty in China?

Professor Iris W. Hung of the School of Management and Economics (SME), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen); Mr. Yuho Yiu of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Sihan Wu, a PhD student of Tsinghua University; Dan Liu and Liman Wang, PhD students of Fudan University; and Mr. Xiao Han of Hangzhou Fancha Technology proposed in their collaborative study titled Randomized Studies in China Show that Studying and Promoting Civic Honesty Needs to Consider Local Norms that China’s unique local cultural background and psychological mechanism of citizens largely influence and determine its civic honesty. It not only provides a new perspective for the academic community to understand civic honesty in different cultural contexts but also lends a meaningful reference for the government and relevant institutions to formulate further and targeted intervention measures.

The research paper was published in Scientific Reports, a sub-journal of Nature, a top international journal.

About the Authors

Iris W. Hung

Professor

SME, CUHK-Shenzhen

Director of the MPhil-PhD in Marketing

Research Field

Consumer judgment and decision and prosocial behavior

Co-authors

Yuho Yiu

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Sihan Wu

Tsinghua University

Dan Liu

Fudan University

Liman Wang

Fudan University

Xiao Han

Hangzhou Fancha Technology