The Italian North-South Divide in Perceived Dishonesty: A Matter of Trust?

Description

The data come from a survey that took place at a mass-gathering cultural festival in late August 2017: “La Notte della Taranta” Festival, held each year since 1998 in the province of Lecce (a district of the Italian Southern Region “Apulia”) in late August (www.lanottedellataranta.it/en). The event is among the most important European folk festivals: Approximately 250,000 attendees on average per year have been registered since the 2012 edition, with this number increasing to more than 300,000 since the 2015 edition. We carried out our survey in the 2017 edition of the Festival employing guided interviews addressed to a representative sample of attendees during (i) the last two minor concerts (August 23-24), (ii) the official rehearsal of the final concert (August 25), (iii) the final concert (August 26). The three Southern Italian villages where the four concerts were held (rehearsal and final concert being held on the same stage) are located within a 10-km radius in the province of Lecce (Sternatia, Martano, Melpignano). They are similar in terms of economic and social indicators. We only interviewed in the last four concerts of the Festival to minimize the time delay between the first and the last interview while profiting from the vast number of attendees in the final concert. The same 18 interviewers per concert, both males and females, approached Festival attendees in random and independent order during each concert, from 8 pm until 1 am (5 hours) during the first three concerts and from 6 pm until 4 am (10 hours) during the last concert. Each interviewer conducted around 11 interviews during the first three concerts and around 22 during the final concert. Each interview lasted 7 minutes on average. Interviewers were distributed uniformly over the event duration to better capture population heterogeneity: Festival concerts usually have different types of attendees according to different timespan, e.g., mainly families at the beginning the concert and young-only audiences toward the end the concert. We made sure that no attendee was interviewed twice in the same concert or at two different concerts. In the survey, we provide respondents with a definition of dishonesty identified as “Lack of integrity and honesty to the detriment of a third party and/or the citizenry”, and ask them to judge the level of dishonesty in several contexts, taking as reference the city where they live in. Based on this definition, perception of dishonesty is represented by three indicators: 1. perception of dishonesty in the public sector; 2. damage associated with dishonest behaviors; 3. probability of not having a lost wallet returned. Other questionnaire items are socio-demographic variables on gender, age, education, occupation, and geographical variables on living in the North of Italy or abroad, as opposed to living in the South of Italy, and being an emigrant (from South to North of Italy). Generalized trust is measured by the World Value Survey question.

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