Boston Tied For 2nd Place in Experiment Measuring Honesty

Boston - last year's winner of a social experiment by Honest Tea - tied with Seattle and Dallas as the second most honest city in America. 

The organic bottled tea company set up a pop-up store by the Prudential Center last Tuesday – in the middle of the heat wave – with bottles of iced tea and a sign asking customers to pay $1 on the honor system. Ninety-seven percent of Bostonians put cash into the transparent, but secure box.

That was significantly more than Boston's winning 93 percent last year, but Chicagoans took the cake (or the tea) with 99 percent of people paying.

Honest Tea conducted the experiment by setting up unmanned pop-up stores simultaneously in 12 cities across the United States. In addition to the signs asking people to pay $1, they also set up hidden cameras to document how honest, and dishonest, people actually were (see the attached video footage.)

“We wanted to challenge people to think about how honest Americans are as a whole, particularly when no one is watching,” said Seth Goldman, president of Honest Tea.  “It was refreshing to see that most cities were in the 90 percent range."

Final Honesty Percentages: 

City

Percentage

Chicago

99

Boston

97

Seattle

97

Dallas

97

Atlanta

96

Philadelphia

96

Cincinnati

95

San Francisco

93

Miami

92

Washington, D.C.

91

Los Angeles

88

New York

86

Bostonians went through about 80 cases, or 960 bottles, of the iced tea. Honest Tea is matching the funds collected - nearly $5,000 overall - and donating all the money - about $10,000 - to three nonprofits:

• Share Our Strength®, a national nonprofit ending childhood hunger in America by connecting children with the nutritious food they need to lead healthy, active lives.
•  City Year, which unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service, to help turn around high-need schools and get at-risk students back on track.
•  Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., whose mission is to create a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines and connecting corridors to build healthier places for healthier people.