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Are there economic benefits to being polite? Experimental evidence from the Israeli rental housing market

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  • Shahar Sansani

    (College of Management, Academic Studies)

Abstract

In this paper, I perform a correspondence test to determine whether there are differential response rates to polite versus impolite requests to see apartments for rent. Being polite (impolite) can send a positive (negative) signal when the receiving party has limited information. Because showing apartments is costly, landlords may filter potential tenants by tenants' politeness. To conduct this test, I sent 1000 requests to view available apartments for rent, through email and text messages, half polite and half impolite. I find no statistically significant difference in the proportion of positive call-backs received based on politeness through both means of communication, demonstrating that in this context, manners do not matter.

Suggested Citation

  • Shahar Sansani, 2018. "Are there economic benefits to being polite? Experimental evidence from the Israeli rental housing market," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(1), pages 565-573.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-17-01008
    as

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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hanson, Andrew & Hawley, Zackary, 2011. "Do landlords discriminate in the rental housing market? Evidence from an internet field experiment in US cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2-3), pages 99-114, September.
    2. Ahmed, Ali M. & Hammarstedt, Mats, 2008. "Discrimination in the rental housing market: A field experiment on the Internet," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 362-372, September.
    3. Sansani, Shahar, 2017. "Are the Religiously Observant Discriminated Against in the Rental Housing Market? Experimental Evidence from Israel," MPRA Paper 81424, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Politeness; housing; correspondence study;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General
    • R2 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis

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