Abstract
This study examined the difference in Japanese people’s recognition of Japanese and foreigners through trust game experiments with Japanese and international university students. Participants mentioned their birthplaces at the beginning of the game. Other demographic characteristics, such as gender and faculty, were also declared and used as control variables. All international students were assigned as trustors and Japanese students were randomly assigned as trustors or trustees. The experimental results revealed that: First, the level of trustworthiness did not significantly differ between Japanese and foreign international students. Second, Japanese students have significantly higher unconditional reciprocity for international students than for Japanese students. Third, the level of conditional reciprocity is not significantly different. This result suggests that being reserved may show the closed-mindedness of Japanese people toward foreigners.
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Data availability
The data supporting the results of this study are available upon request from the corresponding author, Tetsuya Kawamura.
Notes
Here, “foreign” and “foreigners” are represented from Japanese people's perspective.
Trustees decide whether they take all the transfer or return a half of it in Takahashi et al. (2008). It is possible that because the trustees were given only the completely selfish and completely fair choices, finding significant results may have been difficult.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 20K20767 and 20H01519 (Yusuke Osaki) and Focused Research of Osaka Sangyo University (Go Ohtani and Ryuji Saito).
Funding
The Focused Research of Osaka Sangyo University, Foundation for Promotion of Material Science and Technology of Japan, 20K20767, Yusuke Osaki, 20H01519, Yusuke Osaki.
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Kawamura, T., Osaki, Y., Ohtani, G. et al. Reciprocity is Different: Experimental Evidence from a Trust Game Between Japanese Domestic and International Students. Rev Socionetwork Strat 17, 167–178 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12626-023-00143-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12626-023-00143-1