Civic honesty around the globe

1) Interesting when you conclude 'dishonesty'with no contacting received. A second explanation would be that people put it to lost and found box or culturally/occupationally have the practice waiting instead of searching for the owner. For Japan you realized that and excluded it. For other countries, the way to deal with unattended belongings might not be as black and white as in Japan but certainly varies. I could also interpret the data as measuring active searching vs passive waiting strategies across countries.

2) I feel dishonesty is a too big word and this title/claim goes too far. I think it more reflects the sense of responsibility of the employees at this particular job. 'Not my business' is different from being dishonest.

The workload, the degree of satisfaction towards the job and even how natural to communicate in English/via email will largely affect whether an employee would send out that email, which isn't part of their duty in their understanding. They might just leave it there at the counter. Again, I won't call that person being dishonest.

3) The nonusual looking of the wallet and the whole act might be more perceived as a spam or fishing for info in certain regions. In deed, when I moved to one big city in the US, I became less willing to reply to missing phone calls compared to a rather spam-free top city of a different country. Your subjects in certain countries might just be very alert to your behavior.