Global Study: Lost wallets are more likely to be returned if they hold cash

Science Daily ^ | 06/20/2019 | Sujata Gupta

[SeekAndFind]

If you’re prone to losing your wallet, keep it filled with cash.

That’s a tip from researchers who “lost” over 17,000 wallets in 40 countries. In all but two countries, the likelihood of a stranger returning a wallet increased if there was money inside. And the more money in the wallet, the higher the rate of return, the researchers report June 20 in Science.

Those wallet drop-offs were not without hiccups. Flooding in India rerouted the Swiss students, while authorities in Kenya detained one student for a few hours for appearing suspicious. All told, the students handed employees 17,303 wallets.

Cohn and his team then calculated a “return rate” based on how many employees e-mailed the person on the business card within a 100 days to report the wallet as “found.” (Employees didn’t actually return the wallet, but were told after reporting it that they could keep the money or donate it to charity.)

On average, 40 percent of wallets with no money were reported found, compared with 51 percent of wallets with some money. The results varied by country: It was far better to lose a wallet in Denmark, where 82 percent of wallets holding $13.45 were turned in, than in Kenya, where the return rate was just under 20 percent. In the United States, 57 percent of wallets with money were given back. Mexico and Peru were the only two countries where return rates dropped when wallets held money, but those outliers were not statistically significant.

“We were expecting a lower return rate when [the wallet] had more money,” says behavioral economist Alain Cohn of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

[SeekAndFind]

Country differences

Though return rates of lost wallets went up in most countries when those wallets contained money, baseline return rates varied widely from country to country. A wallet was considered “returned” if someone made the effort to contact its owner.

Return rates by country of wallets with and without money

That begs the follow up question: “What are the commonalities between countries that are closer in behavior to each other than other countries?” says Nina Mazar, a behavioral scientist at Boston University who was not part of this study.

The researchers conducted a second set of experiments in three countries — the United States, Britain and Poland — with almost 3,000 wallets. When the amount of money increased to $94.15, return rates jumped to 72 percent on average.

To measure whether altruism was at play, researchers put a key — worthless to the finder, but valuable to the owner — in some of the wallets. Those with both money and keys were more likely to be returned (61 percent) than those that had money but no key (52 percent). The researchers say that offers some evidence of altruism, but not enough to explain why so many more people returned wallets with money than without.

[SeekAndFind]

Overall, 51% of those who were handed a wallet with smaller amounts of money reported it, compared with 72% for a larger sum. The most honest countries were Switzerland, Norway and the Netherlands whereas the least honest were Peru, Morocco and China.

SOURCE: THE CONVERSATION

[EdnaMode]

Interesting. :D

[cuban leaf]

Makes sense to me. On the other hand, I consider cards and ID more valuable to the owner than a small amount of cash.

I was bicycle commuting from Seattle to my home in Renton about 15 years ago and found a wallet on the side of the road. I stopped and noticed a credit card next to it. Then I saw a twenty in the weeds, then another, and another.

It was like an Easter egg hunt. When I was done I had what seemed to be the complete wallet. I rode my bike to the owner’s address. Turned out they had taken their boat out of the water there (east side of lake washington) and he’d left his wallet on the bow of the boat. it fell off as they drove.

It saved them from having to cancel all their cards and get new ID. They tried to pay me but that would have ruined it.

Truth be told, it was fun and very fulfilling.

[SeekAndFind]

COUNTRY-BY-COUNTRY PICTURE

[lee martell]

What about Nigeria?
Stuff some wallets with a Princely Sum and see what happens.

[cuban leaf]

In the United States, 57 percent of wallets with money were given back.

---

Worthless statistic. Is that Detroit, or Mercer Island? We are 50 diverse and separate countries, each with it’s own unique (sometimes only slightly) culture. Drop a wallet in some parts of Detroit and the return rate would be zero. In Downtown Palm Beach it might be a lot higher.

[posterchild]

I would hope they did enough sampling. Similarly: Was it Mexico City or Queretaro? Was it Istanbul or Ephesus? etc

[chajin]

One missing country is Japan, where the return rate is already known to be close to 100% regardless. Contrast with China, where the rate is in the teens. I wish we could prove that the latter was the lingering effects of Maoist communism, and that it would have been different when China was as Confucian as, well, Japan, but I don’t know how that proof would be obtained.

[cuban leaf]

That’s the problem. It would be real easy to skew the results any way you want to.

[I want the USA back]

That correlates with the degree of trust that people have for one another. It’s fitting that China is last, a socialist country with a controlling repressive fascist government that rates people with a “social score.”

[EdnaMode]

Thanks. That’s fascinating.

[Boogieman]

Well, China is communist, so your wallet is my wallet anyway!

[jimtorr]

I lost my wallet in Mt. View, CA in 1990. The wallet was dropped off in the video rental store I frequented, minus about $50 cash. I never complained about the missing cash.

[tbw2]

This study proves cultures are NOT equal, though it is trumpeted as proof altruism is universal.

Across the board, a wallet having money it in it increased the odds it was returned. However, Judeo-Christian Western European countries usually returned it, countries corrupted by Communism and Catholicism’s tendency to tolerate corrupted dictatorships were a tossup, and everywhere else rarely returned it.

[Roccus]

Mid-70s I found a wallet in a street phone booth in lower Manhattan. I took the cash, destroyed the credit cards, called the owner to tell him I would drop it in a mail box and that he should call his cc company.
He wasn’t happy, but at least he got his important and personal papers back and his cc accts weren’t run up.

[Pearls Before Swine]

I’m actually surprised that China is right at the bottom. They may be a country of intellectual property thieves, but they seem to have social cohesion.

[trebb]

Not useless at all - the real intent is to have folks carry more cash so others can rob them and actually get something for their efforts - the “if you lose it” meme was just to increase the efficacy of the desire...