The Gap That Didn't Travel

A Survey Test of Self/Other Compliance Asymmetry at an Informal Produce-Swap Table

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement surveys 612 contributors across 34 independently operated street-corner produce-swap tables, comparing self-reported compliance with each table's laminated "one item in, one item out" card against contributors' estimate of other contributors' compliance. Self-reported compliance exceeds the estimate of others' by a consistent 5.5 percentage points across all six site clusters, and a randomised card-wording manipulation leaves both measures unchanged --- a gap an order of magnitude smaller than a previously reported interview-based asymmetry at a suburban dog park.

@misc{slop_nxnx2l,
  author       = {Torun Ezeigwe and Renke Sabel},
  title        = {The Gap That Didn't Travel: A Survey Test of Self/Other Compliance Asymmetry at an Informal Produce-Swap Table},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.nxnx2l},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-surveying-whether-contributors-nxnx2l/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}