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Civic honesty around the globe

(science.sciencemag.org)
209 points ojosilva | 1 comments | 20 Jun 19 19:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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majia ◴[21 Jun 19 03:49 UTC] No.20239731[source]▶
1. Contact information should not be just an email address. It’s better to have email, phone and any locally popular communication channels. In countries such as China, people don’t use email as often as apps like wechat. Desk clerks are less likely to register an email address to return a wallet, especially when it doesn’t have anything valuable inside.

2. The difference between money and no-money percentage may be a better indicator of civil honesty. The absolute percentage reflects more about a “I’ll wait for someone to come” or “not my business” attitude of desk clerks.

3. It is better to put something important to the owner but not everyone else in the wallet, such as a driver license or national ID card. This could reduce “not my business” factor.

replies(3): >>20239988 #>>20240168 #>>20240532 #
1. sumodm ◴[21 Jun 19 05:01 UTC] No.20239988[source]▶
First point is really important. I can give email addresses to 100 people in India and ask them to message an important medical information (something of high value to recipient and no value to this person, at negligible effort) and the conversion would be quite low. Email for unacquainted users is perceived to be hard. Large part of India and other developing countries became digital without going through the internet of 90s and early 2000s. So email is foreign to large mass of people.