Honesty - still an existing policy?

I was very surprised when I moved to New Zealand to hear that one of our friend's car while left in the street, parked, had a damaged bumper with a post-it note, with the name and phone number of the person responsible for it (this was in 2003). The person was sorry and was willing to get it repaired. On another occasion I had lost my bus pass in the bus one evening. Next day morning reluctantly I bought the bus ticket and cribbed to my mom sitting beside me for having lost the bus pass. It so happened one lady got into the bus, after me, sat next to my seat then gave me one look and pulled my dirty, discolored bus pass from her bag and handed it to me. She said after you left the bus I saw this in your seat yesterday evening, I was sitting next to you yesterday as well. Yay! I thought, joys of living in a small country. Hence I was not surprised to read the following:

"Researchers planted 960 "lost" cellphones in 32 cities around the world. They then rang the phones to see if anyone would answer, and ranked the cities on how many of the 30 phones left in each place were returned to their owner.

Auckland tied with Budapest, Helsinki, Prague, Warsaw, and Zagreb in eighth spot "

Cool! I thought thats expected Kiwis will do well! I would be very much interested to know the response in India though - any guesses?

Well! Well! Well! Mumbai did better than Auckland (wow!) Mumbai ranked 5th apparently alongside New York and Manila. (I am almost feeling guilty now for having thought for a second that NZ would do better than India)

Interestingly, "The survey found that parents with children were keen to show the right behavior and women were slightly more likely to return phones than men."

And
"Those worried about moral decay can rest easy - judging by the New Zealand result showing people aged over 50 were more likely to claim the phone for themselves, the younger generations are more honest than their elders."

The smallest city surveyed, the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana - population 267,000 - finished first, with 29 of 30 cellphones returned.

The bigger centres showed they still harboured trustworthy souls too, with Canada's largest city, Toronto, second and the South Korean metropolis of Seoul third.The bustling Asian hubs of Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur shared the wooden spoon, with just 13 phones returned in each city."

So maybe the world is not that dis-honest place after all eh? [The average rate of cell phones returned was 68 percent :)].

In conclusion, I have nothing to complain about - I am glad my motherland and adopted motherland both did well ;)

Source: Auckland's honesty put to test

Finding keepers? not with cell phones, finds study