香港排倒数第二。。。
Percentage of lost wallets returned per country:
(city results are at the end of the post)
-------------------------------------------------
Norway 100%
Denmark 100%
Singapore 90%
New Zealand 83%
Finland 80%
Scotland 80%
Australia 70%
Japan 70%
South Korea 70%
Spain 70%
Austria 70%
Sweden 70%
U.S. 67%
England 67%
India 65%
Canada 64%
France 60%
Brazil 60%
Netherlands 60%
Thailand 55%
Belgium 50%
Taiwan 50%
Malaysia 50%
Germany 45%
Portugal 45%
Argentina 44%
Russia 43%
Philippines 40%
Wales 40%
Italy 35%
Switzerland 35%
China (Hong Kong): 30%
Mexico 21%
Finders Keepers
By Eric Felte
READER'S DIGEST 2. April 2001
Walking along, minding your own business, you see a billfold on the
ground. You pick it up. Some photos inside, a card or two with ID.
Hmm, and a nice wad of bills too. So what do you do? The right thing,
or …?
Well, Reader's Digest set out to discover just what people would do.
First in big cities and small towns around the United States, and then
in Europe, Asia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America,
editors of the magazine dropped temptation in the path of unsuspecting
people. We "lost" more than 1100 wallets to see just how many would be
returned. Each contained up to $50 in local currency, but also a name
and phone number so that the finder would have no trouble returning
the billfold-presuming the finder wanted to return it. We left the
wallets on sidewalks and in phone booths, in front of office
buildings, discount stores and churches, in parking lots and
restaurants. Then we sat back and watched.
The results were … fascinating.
All told, 44 percent of the wallets were taken up, never to be seen
again. From one country to another, though, the results varied widely.
The gold stars for honesty have to go to Norway and Denmark, where
every single wallet was returned. (Do they even bother to lock doors
there?) Scandinavian countries, on the whole, put the rest of the
world to shame. As did New Zealand and a couple of places in
Asia-South Korea and Japan. But watch your stuff in Argentina and
Italy. And as for Mexico-well, tough luck if you lose your wallet
there. In most Mexican cities, barely any billfolds were returned.
How did the United States fare? Not bad: almost seven out of every ten
wallets were returned. That put us solidly on the list of
pretty-honest countries, alongside Canada, Australia and India.
Of course, cities and towns within the same country often varied
widely as well. (One quick tip: relax in Seattle but keep an eye out
in Atlanta.)
So what does all this say about human character? Plenty-at least when
it comes to those who wore halos. In each place, we talked with people
to find out why they returned our wallets. Throughout the world,
across diverse cultures, it boiled down to a few common themes:
They Learned It at Home
In Weimar, Germany, some of the residents weren't exactly paragons of
virtue: eight of the ten wallets we dropped there simply disappeared.
One of those returned, though, was spotted by eight-year-old
Jacqueline Geier while she was riding her bike. After pointing out her
find to her mother, Ingrid, the two of them quickly decided it was not
theirs to keep. "When I grew up, times were rough and we needed every
pfennig," Ingrid said. "But my parents were very honest, and I've
tried to bring up my three children the same way."
Mary, a little girl in a pink floral dress, found a wallet on a bench
in a Seattle amusement park. She ran to her father, Yong Cha, who
immediately handed it back to her. "You must take this to someone who
can help find the owner," he said. The nine-year-old took her dad's
hand and they went off to find the park office. "Honesty is the most
important thing a child can learn," Cha said.
So if the power of example is important, what do we make of these
others? In the chic resort town of Lausanne, Switzerland, a smartly
dressed woman in a cape and stiletto heels was walking hand in hand
with her daughter. The woman stooped to grab our wallet. With the
young girl looking on silently, she pocketed the find. We never heard
from her.
Another wallet was spotted by a boy out shopping with his mother and
sister in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Mom quickly stuffed the wallet into
her baggy pants, grabbed both children and hurried to catch a bus. And
then there was the woman who pulled her car up short of the entrance
to Fulham Palace, once the residence of the Bishops of London. Her son
jumped out and snatched the wallet. Back in the car, the woman picked
through it carefully before driving through the palace gates. She
never got in touch either.
Matters of Faith
Zulhijah Binti Sahar, a 20-year-old woman running a fruit stall in
Kajang, Malaysia, wasn't exactly getting rich, but she didn't waver
for a minute. "Being a Muslim, I'm aware of temptation and how to
overcome it," she said.
Like Sahar, many who handed back our billfolds cited their religious
beliefs. In the lobby of Taipei's Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, we
left a wallet on top of a pay phone. H. C. Chiu found it, and promptly
took it to the reception desk. "It is my duty to do good work," said
Chiu, a devout Buddhist.
Lena Kruchinina, a governess in the Russian city of Vladimir, heeded
one of the Ten Commandments after she found a wallet on the floor of a
drugstore. As she handed it to the pharmacist, she told us: "Several
years ago I could have taken it, but now I am completely changed. As
they say, 'Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor's.'"
Which isn't to say that sticky-fingered people are necessarily
godless. In Mexico, at least two apparently devout Christians who kept
our wallets made the sign of the cross after picking them up and
peeking inside. The cash, they must have decided, was heaven-sent.
It Could Happen to You
Time and again, the world over, those who looked like they could use
$50 often turned it in, while many people who appeared affluent enough
took the money and ran. Consider Frasher Hajzeraj, an Albanian who
fled the fighting in Kosovo and was working as a restaurant waiter in
Switzerland. After handing in our wallet, he said, "I put in long
hours and I know how hard one must work to earn that much."
Indeed, survivors of tough times seemed to respond most often with
empathy, and a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God honesty. When she found
a wallet, for instance, Shannon Hill was a college student in
Greensboro, N.C., working three jobs to pay for tuition, food and
rent. Her first thought: "I could sure use this money." But then she
saw a picture of a baby in the wallet, and changed her tune. Somebody
else needed it more.
Several of those who returned wallets had memories of losing one
themselves. Andele Boomsma, a young man with a punk haircut, picked up
a billfold in the Dutch city of Leeuwarden. "As a child, I lost a
wallet in an amusement park," he said. "It was never returned." Now he
could spare someone else the same hassles.
But the most poignant example of empathy came from Brian Toothill, a
Canadian who found one of our wallets in a telephone booth in
Saskatoon. "Your wallet was down low in the booth, and I thought it
might have belonged to a handicapped person in a wheelchair," he told
us. "They'd need the money more than I do, wouldn't they?" Well, maybe
not. At the time, Brian was out of work, and minutes before returning
our wallet he had been searching for bottles and cans he could recycle
for cash. Now there's a guy with his values in place.
A century ago, Oscar Wilde observed that the one thing impossible to
resist is temptation. Now that we've put his axiom to the test, we're
happy to report that Oscar was probably too cynical. Okay, maybe not
by much, but you do have nearly a six-in-ten chance of getting your
wallet back. For the rest of you, those who kept the cash, you've got
our number-and we know where you live.
Results (by-City)
Wallets Returned - Wallets Kept
U.S.
Seattle 9 returned, 1 kept by finder
St. Louis 7 3
Atlanta 5 5
Boston* 7 3
Los Angeles* 6 4
Houston* 5 5
Greensboro, N.C. 7 3
Las Vegas 5 5
Dayton, Ohio 5 5
Concord, N.H. 8 2
Cheyenne, Wyo. 8 2
Meadville, Pa. 8 2
(*wallets dropped in suburbs of these cities)
Canada
Toronto 4 6
Montreal 6 4
Vancouver 7 3
Winnipeg* 7 3
Halifax* 5 5
Calgary* 6 4
St. John's 6 4
Saskatoon 6 4
Moncton 10 0
Charlottetown 8 2
Val d'Or 6 4
Whitehorse 6 4
(*wallets dropped in suburbs of these cities)
Mexico
Mexico City 1 9
San Cristobal 0 10
San Miguel de Allende 6 4
Guasave 2 8
Guadalajara 1 9
Monterrey 2 8
Tijuana 3 7
Merida 3 7
Veracruz 2 8
Ciudad Delicias 3 7
Fresnillo 1 9
Huajua pan de Leon 1 9
Europe
London 7 3
Exeter, England 5 5
Liverpool 6 4
Warwick, England 8 2
Basildon, England 7 3
Pontefract, England 7 3
Cardiff, Wales 4 6
Glasgow 8 2
Stockholm 7 3
Lisbon 5 5
Viseu, Portugal 4 6
The Hague 5 5
Brussels 5 5
Milan 4 6
Ravenna, Italy 3 7
Burgos, Spain 7 3
Oslo* 10 0
Stuttgart* 7 3
Weimar, Germany 2 8
Vienna* 7 3
Paris* 6 4
Odense, Denmark 10 0
Lausanne, Switzerland 2 8
St. Gallen, Switzerland 5 5
Lahti, Finland 8 2
Leeuwarden, Netherlands 7 3
(*wallets dropped in suburbs of these cities)
Russia
Moscow 5 5
St. Petersburg 2 8
Nizhni Novgorod 5 5
Sergiyev Posad 5 5
Vladimir 4 6
Mozhaisk 5 5
Australia
Sydney 4 6
Canberra 8 2
Brisbane 8 2
Darwin 8 2
Perth 7 3
Hobart 8 2
Melbourne 5 5
Adelaide 8 2
New Zealand
Auckland 8 2
Wellington 9 1
Christchurch 8 2
Asia
Seoul 6 4
Bombay 5 5
Manila 4 6
Singapore> 9 1
Inchon, Korea 8 2
Taipei 5 5
Bangkok 5 5
Hong Kong 3 7
Trivandrum, India 8 2
Kamakura, Japan 7 3
Chiang Mai, Thailand 6 4
Kajang, Malaysia 5 5
Tainan, Taiwan 5 5
Lapu-Lapu City, Philippines 4 6
Brazil
Blumenau 5 5
Brasilia 5 5
Buzios 4 6
Foz do Iguacu 6 4
Manaus 8 2
Ouro Preto 5 5
Ribeirao Preto 10 0
Rio de Janeiro 6 4
Salvador 4 6
Sao Paulo 7 3
Argentina
Buenos Aires 8 10
Greater Buenos Aires 3 7
San Luis 1 5
Mendoza* 6 4 La Rioja*
4 3 Tucuman* 3 5
Santiago del Estero* 2 1
Cordoba* 7 8
Santa Fe* 5 8
Rio Negro* 5 5