留守儿童更信任他人吗?来自实验经济学的证据

文章采用经典的信任博弈框架，用实验经济学方法比较城市儿童、农村留守儿童和农村非留守儿童的信任行为。实验结果发现，农村留守儿童对他人的信任水平显著高于城市儿童，而农村留守儿童和非留守儿童的信任水平没有显著差异。在控制了性别、民族、兄弟姐妹数量等人口学特征后，农村身份对儿童的信任水平有显著正向影响，父母双方外出务工、一方外出务工对信任水平均无显著影响。从被信任度来看，三组儿童中，城市儿童被信任度最低，农村留守儿童被信任度最高，但考虑人口学特征后，农村身份、留守身份均不影响被信任度。结合儿童在利他实验中的表现，文章还发现在利他行为中表现为无私型的儿童比平等型和恶意型有更高的信任水平。研究结果表明与同年龄城市儿童相比，农村儿童而不仅是农村留守儿童更信任他人。

Do Left-behind Children Trust Others More? Evidence from Experimental Economics

Using the classic trust game experiment, this paper compares the trust behaviors of urban children, rural left-behind children and rural non-left-behind children. The experimental results show that the level of trust of left-behind children in rural areas is significantly higher than that of urban children, while the level of trust between rural left-behind children and non-left-behind children is not significantly different. After controlling demographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, and number of siblings, rural identity has a significant positive impact on children's trust level. Both parents leaving home and one parent leaving home have no significant impact on trust level. From the perspective of trustworthiness, among the three groups of children, urban children have the lowest degree of trustworthiness, and rural left-behind children have the highest degree of trustworthiness. However, after considering demographic characteristics, rural identity and left-behind identity do not affect trustworthiness. Combined with the data in other-regarding experiment, this paper also found that on average the altruistic-type children have a higher level of trust than that of egalitarian-type and Spiteful-type. The results of this study show that rural children, not only rural left-behind children, trust others more than urban children of the same age.