A Non-Monetary Truth-Telling Incentive

In this paper, I compare the effect of Bayesian Truth Serum to that of an Honour code, which serves as a non-monetary truth-telling incentive, on admission rates to unverifiable and questionable behaviour. I collected data from 736 students of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam on six forms of questionable behaviour through an online survey. I find that both the BTS and the Honour code (self-concept treatment) elicit higher admission rates to questionable behaviour than the control survey. No significant differences are found between the two truth-telling mechanisms.