Lost Letters in Dutch Neighborhoods: A Field Experiment on Collective Efficacy

A lack of collective efficacy in neighborhoods is associated with social and physical disorder and related anti-social actions. It is less clear, however, whether collective efficacy in neighborhoods also enhances prosocial, other-regarding behavior. We studied this association by employing the Lost Letter Technique in a largescale field experiment. Our data stem from 1,240 letters dropped in a representative sample of 110 Dutch neighborhoods, combined with neighborhood data based on a survey of residents (SSND2, n = 996) and information provided by Statistics Netherlands. We distinguish betwe... Mehr ...