Do Markets Erode Trust?

In recent years,people’s living standards of life have been greatly improved due to the process of market-oriented progress.But at the same time,it was found that the moral level of the public fell significantly.In the academic community there is also a debate on the market and social morality.Some scholars believe that markets erode social responsibility and moral standards,but some other scholars hold the view that markets not only do not reduce people’s sense of morality,but promote people’s moral evolution.Trust and betrayal are typical aspects of moral standards.In order to explore whether markets reduce trust level among people,this paper simulates the trading environment of commodity markets by means of laboratory experiment,and uses trust game model,risk decision model and endowment distribution model to compare the trust rate under "Market" and "No market" situations and reach conclusions that markets do not erode trust.The "Market" situation refers to markets with the characteristics of the trading environment,which are characterized by the description of the market language,free pricing and consumers’ freedom of choice.The "No market" situation refers to the environment that neither has the description of the market language nor free pricing and consumer freedom of choice.The level of trust is mainly measured by the trust rate in trust games.In addition to exploring the consumer’s trust behavior,we can also make conclusions about firms’price,firms’ trustworthiness rate,firm income,consumer income,social efficiency,social average income,etc.Besides,we further explore the factor of markets which has the greatest impact on the trust rate and the factor which does not exert an essential effect on trust.So we set up ’single factor experiments’ and ’two-factor experiments’ to observe the influence of market description,firms’ free price and consumers’ free choice on consumer’s trust level.Finally,we use descriptive statistical analysis,graphical analysis,nonparametric test and regression analysis to draw conclusions.