Measures of Trust and Participation in Collective Actions: Evidence from Rural Senegal

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of trust on individuals’ decisions to participate in collective activities in rural Senegal. For this purpose, a version of the trust game in which subjects are matched with a random anonymous member of their own community is designed. Results are compared to survey trust questions: the World Value Survey trust question and specific questions regarding trust in neighbors and trust in strangers. Results show that trust, as measured by survey questions, has poor predictive power, while the results from a simple trust game are much better predictors of local participation in collective activities. More particularly, a one-unit change in the amount sent increases the odds of participation in Tontine, Credit Association and Animation by 2.3 percent, 2.6 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively. Furthermore, we find that individuals who consider that ‘most people can be trusted’ have 17.58 percent more chance to participate in Animation activities.