I accidentally left my wallet in a taxi on the way from Madrid airport into central Madrid. The taxi driver actually called me and came back a couple hours later. (I gave her 100 Euros that she could have simply taken).
Unfortunately, the next day the same wallet was snatched out of my pocket in the Plaza Mayor, and I didn't realize it until I reached to pay for a meal. Talk about variance.
Pickpockets - This is one of the most common crimes happening in the city. ALWAYS watch your personal belongings and if possible don't carry unneeded cash with you or any important documents such as passports or IDs. Be very wary in the metro especially during rush hour (if possible have your bag in front of you) and Times Square, which is a hotspot for pickpockets. Also, be on the lookout for outright muggings.
NYC is 1 city. Europe is 50 countries. To say you broadly generalized is to understate by a mile. Let's narrow it down to high density mixed cities like Paris or Berlin and you may be onto something, but in reality you also have to be in a bad part of Berlin, or a particularly high density tourist area. Most cities and countries overall in Europe are completely safe. Most are actually much safer than even notoriously safe US cities.
From personal experience, non-confrontational petty theft in Europe tends to be an issue only in high density high tourist areas. So no wonder it can have weird contrast with civic metrics
It's funny how times have changed. I remember public safety videos on British Airways when you would fly into New York, before you landed, they'd play a 5-minute clip about how dangerous it is and how to keep your wallet safe. As I recall it was in English and Japanese... but I was very young so maybe I'm not remembering perfectly.
USA is big. Europe is big. Really depends on which part of Europe you speak of. Norway is probably the most peaceful country in the world, next to NZ, from my subjective perspective. Also do not just listen to what "Everyone" tells you, reality is most often more nuanced than the information spread of provocations and rumor.
YMMV also depending of who you are. In China, I look like a tourist, so pickpockets have a field trip with me, they don't even bother to be discreet.
In Paris, I never had a problem, because I look local. But my mother from the country side actually got troubles, because she looked like an easy prey, despite take much more care about her sutff than I do.
It would be interesting to submit petty theft to a similar cultural analysis that this article uses. Neither NYC nor the aforementioned European cities are ethnically/culturally homogeneous. A study like this could either corroborate the findings of this article, or introduce an interesting dimension to the analysis, something non-trivial.
> No one tells you to pin your pockets shut when you visit NYC.
When I took my family from Brazil to visit Orlando, every single person and tourism agency told me to do just that (and hide the money out of pockets).
I imagine they do that for NYC too. Looks like a universal rule that wherever you go there will pickpockets specialized in tourists.
I was doing sightseeing in Pokhara (Nepal) with my friend some years ago, and on a boat trip across the Phewa Lake, I left my camera behind in the boat and thought I had lost it. They actually came back to find me and give it back to me. I had already settled on the idea that I will never get it back.
Ha, in Kerela, India my backpack fell off my bike, with cash, passport and laptop inside.
2 hours later when I started searching for it, a couple of ex-military dudes found me on the road - they were looking for me all around on their scooter, as they saw the backpack fall from the bike next to the dam they were guarding. Took nothing from it as well. I gave them some cash as a thank you of course.
Rural India seems like a very safe space to loose things in as a lot of people seem to be helpful and not opportunistic.
I guess they might just not be accustomed to european stuff so might not really know what to do with it. Regardless I was extremely grateful to those two guys that saved me a lot of hassle reissuing my passport.
yes! It's amazing. Another one in this vein.. my girlfriend left her hat in a car when we were hitchhiking in France. We didn't realize it until we had wandered off around a village. An hour later the boy and girl who had given us a ride tracked us down and gave her her hat back. It was a very cool Australian cowboy hat.
> The business cards displayed the owner’s name and email address and we used fictitious but commonplace male names for each country.
This is assuming that email is a ubiquitous communication method in all countries, which is not true. USA has a very high email penetration rate, so does Japan (where all phones use email instead of SMS). On the other end of the spectrum, China's email penetration rate is less than 40% [1]. Business in China is conducted over WeChat and phone calls instead of email. If the person receiving the wallet does not have an email account, or doesn't even know what email is, I'd imagine the email contact rate to be quite low.
(1) This issue doesn't affect the treatment effect (the difference in return rates for money vs no money), which was the main focus of the paper. If email usage is low in a particular country, that should affect return rates equally in both the money and no money conditions.
(2) We've done a number of robustness checks on the point about email usage and have not been able to find evidence that it has a meaningful impact on the results. For instance, when looking at cross country differences in wallet return rates, the rank order correlation between the "raw" data and one that statistically adjusts for email penetration rates (based on World Bank data) is 0.95.
(1) Noted. The main graphic emphasizes reporting rate over the delta, in both the axes selection and the ranking - and indeed the ranking is the main takeaway from many of the readers. If you rank by percentage delta of report rate, the graphic would be drastically different. This newer graphic wouldn't be "fair" either, as countries with higher control (no money) report rate would have a relatively low percentage delta.
(2) The World Bank Enterprise Survey data is listed under the title "Percent of firms using e-mail to interact with clients/suppliers" (for which China is at 85%) which I think is not the same as email penetration rate (which in the above reference in my parent comment, is at <40%). I understand your reasoning that cross country data is hard to come across.
I also read your reply in Science. I believe that while there are multiple limitations conducting the research - all perfectly reasonable - the limitations nonetheless affected the credibility of Fig. 1 - the main figure of the paper.
It is also mentioned in the reply that creating new social accounts is unfeasible. While I think this is true, wouldn't a single account per platform suffice? Most social platforms allow anonymity for display names / handles. If the social account name does not bear resemblance to an actual name, I don't think the participants would notice.
Important thing to consider is that many people may not report the wallet and not touch it being afraid of a rather popular scam when people who reported the stolen wallet were confronted with a claim that it had way more money inside and extorted on that amount. That actually happened to people i know in Russia. So in a way it may be simply a reflection of some countries being more criminal or dangerous so people just "mind their business", not that they are particularly dishonest.
Underrated comment. I think this sentiment alone skews the data significantly. The study needs to asses whether the wallet is picked up or not. In many places in the world, people won't pick up random wallets simply due to fear of getting scammed.
It's important to note that most Chinese people hardly ever use email, the Internet started rather late in China, for most Chinese people the Internet means smartphone and WeChat, and WeChat often is the only place where business communication happens, had they put a WeChat QR code on the business card, the result would be much more interesting.
Important cultural difference that the study failed to highlight.
You'd probably see a similar <15% success rate if you used a WeChat QR code for contact in the West. People might scan the code, but stop once they realize it's an unfamiliar platform that they don't have an account for.
It's a fair point, but we've tried to test this issue in a number of different ways. Based on the available data, cross country differences in email usage doesn't seem to have a meaningful impact on our results. See my comment above to gyf304.
Not surprised to see Kazakhstan at the bottom of the list (I am more surprised to find us there at all). We have insane levels of corruption: almost anything can be "solved" by knowing the right people and spending a bit of money. There has also been somewhat of a news streak recently about taxi drivers fleecing hundreds of dollars off credulous tourists for a ride around the block.
Most people communicate over the internet through WhatsApp and Telegram, but everyone I know has an email account and knows how to use it, so I don't think that's the reason.
The only consolation is that China has managed to score even worse.
One glaring presupposition (which is false) of "rationalist approaches", but also those who reject them, yet maintain the same inherently hyper-individualistic, atomistic conception of human beings[0], is immediately apparent in the first sentence of the abstract: "Rationalist approaches to economics assume that people value their own interests over the interests of strangers."
It is NOT in my interest to be dishonest. To think it is is to fail to understand that human nature is thoroughly social and that, because of that, there is a common good. The common good is prior to private good; the latter depends on the former, not the other way around, as liberal philosophy conceives it.
Thus, maximizing my own interest, by which I mean my own good, is to live maximally in conformity with human nature, and part of that means living in a way that recognizes the primacy of the common good. Dishonesty per se is also harmful to the individual in the very act of being dishonest. A person is corrupted in the very act of being dishonest.
[0] I am not denying the existence or worth of individuals. I reject collectivism which is ready to throw the individual under the bus for the collective (which is rather incoherent). I mean only the conception of human beings as atomic, in which society is merely transactional or contractual, instead od recognizing transactions as a subset of actions that occur within a social context and only where transactions are appropriate and make sense).
If I'm reading their experiment correctly, they're only targeting employees behind the counter in public buildings. I'd be curious to know whether that influences the results at all.
Clearly there's a cultural element to dishonesty but I'd guess that poorer less equal countries are going to do worse vs richer more equal ones.
edit: Also, I'm not sure if keeping the money is strictly speaking "dishonest". Yeah it's a bad thing but if your philosophy is finders keepers then, is that dishonest?
On targeting front-desk employees, we did this both to allow relatively portable cross-country comparisons and for reasons of internal validity (e.g., if we placed wallets on the ground, then can participants "select" into the study which compromises our ability to draw causal inferences).
On your last point about whether it's dishonest to hold onto a wallet. The question is about the treatment effect --- all things equal, is it more dishonest to hold onto a wallet with money vs no money? We polled nationally representative samples in the US, UK, and Poland and in all three countries most people thought so.
Amazing study, was really interesting to read. How do you get to do this studies? How does someone get into social science like this? How did you pay for all the tickets for all the cities?
I live in one of the very high response rate countries and would imagine that the unreturned wallets were just binned, and that those containing money are more likely to be returned simply because there is obvious benefit to recipient to have it returned. When you lose a wallet you cancel your cards etc, even change the locks if you loose your keys, so people will reason that there is no big point to returning it anyway?
That phrase has always struck me as particularly American, and western American. In many places people talk of "getting the locks changed" rather than "changing the locks". It's the difference between doing something to the locks rather than swapping them out for new ones. I guess that is a reflection of the general poor quality of locks used in the US: Buying a new lock is cheaper than getting a locksmith to rekey an existing lock. And when I was on the east coast I do remember seeing more locksmiths (at least their storefronts/trucks) than on the on the west.
I live on the west coast of the US. When we say 'change the locks' we don't really mean changing out the physical locks for new ones. We mean having them re-keyed. It's not very expensive, and contrary to your anecdote, there are locksmiths everywhere here. A lot of them have no storefront, they are entirely mobile (and a fair bit of the time, unmarked vans). Storefronts still exist, but much of the regular interaction consumers have with keys these days is easily handled at the local home improvement stores.
I don't think that's true at all - replacing even cheap locks would be much more expensive than having them re-keyed. I'm sure replacement happens, say if someone wants to upgrade to better locks at the same time or is unaware that locks can be re-keyed, but I doubt it's the norm.
I think 'changing the locks' is just the American way of saying 'getting the locks re-keyed'. If that phrasing is even uniquely American, which I'm not sure of either.
Here in Sweden everyone uses Yale style locks and it’s super trivial and cheap to change just the barrel bit inside the lock. Everyone can do it themselves in a few minutes and there are no locksmiths about.
Readit News
Unfortunately, the next day the same wallet was snatched out of my pocket in the Plaza Mayor, and I didn't realize it until I reached to pay for a meal. Talk about variance.
No one tells you to pin your pockets shut when you visit NYC. Everyone tells you all sorts of ways to keep your belongings safe in Europe.
So, as another commenter remarked, I suspect that this plays a major role in the apparent contradiction you highlight.
https://wikitravel.org/en/New_York_City
I guess weirdness is a matter of culture.
In Paris, I never had a problem, because I look local. But my mother from the country side actually got troubles, because she looked like an easy prey, despite take much more care about her sutff than I do.
When I took my family from Brazil to visit Orlando, every single person and tourism agency told me to do just that (and hide the money out of pockets).
I imagine they do that for NYC too. Looks like a universal rule that wherever you go there will pickpockets specialized in tourists.
Too bad japan isn't on the list. I would expect a high level of personal honesty there.
That said, there is still yakuza in japan. I wonder how that works.
Dead Comment
2 hours later when I started searching for it, a couple of ex-military dudes found me on the road - they were looking for me all around on their scooter, as they saw the backpack fall from the bike next to the dam they were guarding. Took nothing from it as well. I gave them some cash as a thank you of course.
Rural India seems like a very safe space to loose things in as a lot of people seem to be helpful and not opportunistic.
I guess they might just not be accustomed to european stuff so might not really know what to do with it. Regardless I was extremely grateful to those two guys that saved me a lot of hassle reissuing my passport.
Deleted Comment
> The business cards displayed the owner’s name and email address and we used fictitious but commonplace male names for each country.
This is assuming that email is a ubiquitous communication method in all countries, which is not true. USA has a very high email penetration rate, so does Japan (where all phones use email instead of SMS). On the other end of the spectrum, China's email penetration rate is less than 40% [1]. Business in China is conducted over WeChat and phone calls instead of email. If the person receiving the wallet does not have an email account, or doesn't even know what email is, I'd imagine the email contact rate to be quite low.
[1] https://www.twinova.com/email-dead-long-live-wechat/#:~:text....
(1) This issue doesn't affect the treatment effect (the difference in return rates for money vs no money), which was the main focus of the paper. If email usage is low in a particular country, that should affect return rates equally in both the money and no money conditions.
(2) We've done a number of robustness checks on the point about email usage and have not been able to find evidence that it has a meaningful impact on the results. For instance, when looking at cross country differences in wallet return rates, the rank order correlation between the "raw" data and one that statistically adjusts for email penetration rates (based on World Bank data) is 0.95.
Here are my thoughts on your 2 points.
(1) Noted. The main graphic emphasizes reporting rate over the delta, in both the axes selection and the ranking - and indeed the ranking is the main takeaway from many of the readers. If you rank by percentage delta of report rate, the graphic would be drastically different. This newer graphic wouldn't be "fair" either, as countries with higher control (no money) report rate would have a relatively low percentage delta.
(2) The World Bank Enterprise Survey data is listed under the title "Percent of firms using e-mail to interact with clients/suppliers" (for which China is at 85%) which I think is not the same as email penetration rate (which in the above reference in my parent comment, is at <40%). I understand your reasoning that cross country data is hard to come across.
I also read your reply in Science. I believe that while there are multiple limitations conducting the research - all perfectly reasonable - the limitations nonetheless affected the credibility of Fig. 1 - the main figure of the paper.
It is also mentioned in the reply that creating new social accounts is unfeasible. While I think this is true, wouldn't a single account per platform suffice? Most social platforms allow anonymity for display names / handles. If the social account name does not bear resemblance to an actual name, I don't think the participants would notice.
You'd probably see a similar <15% success rate if you used a WeChat QR code for contact in the West. People might scan the code, but stop once they realize it's an unfamiliar platform that they don't have an account for.
Most people communicate over the internet through WhatsApp and Telegram, but everyone I know has an email account and knows how to use it, so I don't think that's the reason.
The only consolation is that China has managed to score even worse.
It is NOT in my interest to be dishonest. To think it is is to fail to understand that human nature is thoroughly social and that, because of that, there is a common good. The common good is prior to private good; the latter depends on the former, not the other way around, as liberal philosophy conceives it.
Thus, maximizing my own interest, by which I mean my own good, is to live maximally in conformity with human nature, and part of that means living in a way that recognizes the primacy of the common good. Dishonesty per se is also harmful to the individual in the very act of being dishonest. A person is corrupted in the very act of being dishonest.
[0] I am not denying the existence or worth of individuals. I reject collectivism which is ready to throw the individual under the bus for the collective (which is rather incoherent). I mean only the conception of human beings as atomic, in which society is merely transactional or contractual, instead od recognizing transactions as a subset of actions that occur within a social context and only where transactions are appropriate and make sense).
Clearly there's a cultural element to dishonesty but I'd guess that poorer less equal countries are going to do worse vs richer more equal ones.
edit: Also, I'm not sure if keeping the money is strictly speaking "dishonest". Yeah it's a bad thing but if your philosophy is finders keepers then, is that dishonest?
On targeting front-desk employees, we did this both to allow relatively portable cross-country comparisons and for reasons of internal validity (e.g., if we placed wallets on the ground, then can participants "select" into the study which compromises our ability to draw causal inferences).
On your last point about whether it's dishonest to hold onto a wallet. The question is about the treatment effect --- all things equal, is it more dishonest to hold onto a wallet with money vs no money? We polled nationally representative samples in the US, UK, and Poland and in all three countries most people thought so.
That phrase has always struck me as particularly American, and western American. In many places people talk of "getting the locks changed" rather than "changing the locks". It's the difference between doing something to the locks rather than swapping them out for new ones. I guess that is a reflection of the general poor quality of locks used in the US: Buying a new lock is cheaper than getting a locksmith to rekey an existing lock. And when I was on the east coast I do remember seeing more locksmiths (at least their storefronts/trucks) than on the on the west.
I think 'changing the locks' is just the American way of saying 'getting the locks re-keyed'. If that phrasing is even uniquely American, which I'm not sure of either.