Does trust mean giving and not risking? Experimental evidence from the trust game

We aim to investigate whether trust is mainly influenced by pro-social concerns or by risk-related issues. In a within-subjects framework, we elicit subjects' other regarding attitude as well as preference towards risk via respectively the ring test (Griesinger and Livingston [1973]) and the Holt and Laury test [2002]. These measures are then exploited in two different sorts of giving games: (i) a standard trust game, which by construction embodies a dimension of risk (i.e. the transfer-back from the receiver to the sender), and (ii) a (triple) dictator game in which the component of risk is removed. The measures of other regarding preferences and risk preferences were also used to explain the gaps of transfer due to strategic anticipation. The results show that giving behavior in trust game is driven by other regarding preferences and not by risk-related considerations. However, we find no significant correlation between the gaps of transfer and both social and risk preferences.