Monetary incentives versus class credit: Evidence from a large classroom trust experiment

•We report a binary trust experiment incentivized with either cash or class credit.•Second mover choices are elicited using the strategy method.•This trust game is played by two auditorium classes with different incentives.•We find no differences in behavior on average.•Some second movers play closer to game theoretic prediction if incentivized with credit.

This paper reports an experimental investigation of a trust game using either cash or class credit as incentives to participants. We recruit from two auditorium classes. In one class, each token has cash value; in the other, each token is worth extra-credit points added to the students' overall average at the end of the semester. The results indicate that using extra-credit points to motivate participants generates qualitatively similar data on average as participants incentivized with cash. We do find a difference in behavior with second movers who expect a low grade, but those incentivized with class credit are closer to the game theoretic prediction.