paopaokade

The authors admitted above that they excluded Japan because of cultural differences (otherwise Japan would have been at the bottom). All other countries/regions most culturally similar to China, including South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, are not included possibly because of cultural differences. Yet the result from China is totally to be trusted. Bravo.

I was raised in China and certainly got many of my lost things back growing up. Just because many Chinese folks prefer not to contact the owners directly does not mean they do not use other ways to return lost items :)

Exactly. I was raised in China and our culture shares many similarities with the Japanese. Some of us tend not to bother strangers unless necessary since it might be seen as rude. In these experiments, I imagine a fair number of Chinese simply decided to wait for the owners of lost items coming to them instead of the other way around.

I did not expect China to top the list or anywhere near there, but such cherry picking of data is indeed concerning. By the way, where are South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore? Were these countries/regions (culturally similar to China) also excluded because the data did not fit the authors' expectations?