Investments in and returns on network embeddedness: An experiment with trust games

Trust problems are ubiquitous in social and economic exchange. They are known to be mitigated if exchange partners are embedded in social structures that disseminate information on past behavior. If such “network embeddedness” makes exchanges possible that would not be possible otherwise, it is also expected that actors are willing to exert effort to establish embeddedness. Theory suggests that the degree to which network embeddedness...