Most strangers do return things. The only real question is whether you made it easy.
That sounds like a slogan. It is actually a finding. In 2019, four researchers published a study in Science in which they turned in 17,303 “lost” wallets in 355 cities across 40 countries, and then counted how many people tried to contact the owner. The headline result is not the reassuring part. The reassuring part is the detail underneath it — including the part that decides whether a tag on your bag does anything at all.
What the study actually did
Alain Cohn, Michel André Maréchal, David Tannenbaum and Christian Lukas Zünd ran the same small piece of theatre 17,303 times.
A research assistant walked into a bank, a museum, a post office, a hotel or a police station, put a transparent card case on the counter and said: “Hi, I found this on the street around the corner. Somebody must have lost it. I’m in a hurry and have to go. Can you please take care of it?” Then they walked out without leaving a name or a number.
Inside each wallet: three identical business cards with the owner’s name and email address, a grocery list, and a key. All of it written in the local language, so the owner read as a resident, not a tourist. The only thing that changed between wallets was the money — either nothing, or the local equivalent of US$13.45, adjusted for purchasing power.
The outcome measured was narrow and honest: did anyone email that address within 100 days?
They did, often.
- 40% of wallets with no money in them were reported.
- 51% of wallets with US$13.45 in them were reported.
- In a follow-up in the US, UK and Poland, the researchers raised the stakes to US$94.15 — seven times the original amount. Reporting went from 46% (no money) to 61% (money) to 72% (big money).
Money went up. Honesty went up with it. The pattern held in 38 of the 40 countries, and in no country did reporting drop significantly when money was added.
The part most articles leave out
Averages hide people. This study’s averages hide entire countries.
Reporting rates by country ranged from 14% to 76%. At the top sat Switzerland, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. At the bottom sat China, Peru, Kazakhstan, Morocco and Kenya. In the lowest-scoring places, most wallets were simply never reported — including the ones with nothing in them but a stranger’s grocery list and house key.
So “most strangers do return things” is a statement about many places, not all of them. If you live somewhere near the bottom of that range, the honest read is that roughly one finder in five will act. That is still not zero, and it is still worth a tag — but it is not 72%.
Two more caveats worth stating plainly, because a study quoted dishonestly is worth nothing:
- These were employees at a counter, not passers-by on a pavement. A hotel receptionist who accepts a wallet in front of a colleague is not the same as a stranger who spots your dog’s collar in a park. The study measures institutional honesty, not street honesty.
- The wallets were handed over, not found. Someone had already done the awkward part.
What survives those caveats is the direction of the effect, and it is the direction that matters here.
Why returns go up when there is more to steal
This is where it gets interesting, because almost nobody predicts it.
The researchers asked 299 ordinary people to guess the US results. They predicted 73% for an empty wallet, 65% with modest cash, 55% with a lot of cash — honesty falling as temptation rose. Then the researchers asked 279 top academic economists. They were wrong too: 49% of them also predicted reporting would fall as the money grew.
The actual answer is that the wrong cost was being modelled. People were not weighing “how much can I gain?” against “how much effort is this?” They were weighing it against what keeping it would make them.
The researchers ruled out the obvious alternatives one by one. Fear of getting caught? Security cameras, bystanders and state lost-property laws explained nothing. Keeping the cash and returning the rest? They audited returned wallets: over 98% of the money came back. Hoping for a bigger reward? Survey data showed no such expectation.
What was left was two things, and they both scale with what is inside:
- Theft aversion. In follow-up surveys, people said that failing to return the wallet would feel more like stealing as the money inside went up. An empty card case is litter. A card case with a day’s wages in it is someone’s money, and the person holding it has to decide what that makes them.
- Altruism. The researchers ran a version with the key removed. A key is worth nothing to a finder and a great deal to an owner. Wallets with the key were reported 9.2 percentage points more often than wallets without one.
That second number is the one to sit with. A key has no resale value. It moved returns by nine points anyway, purely because the finder could see it mattered to someone.
People are not deciding whether your thing is worth money to them. They are deciding whether keeping it would make them a thief — and whether losing it hurt you.
Effort is the other half, and it is the half you control
There is a fourth term in the researchers’ model that rarely gets quoted. Their framework has four components: the payoff of keeping the wallet, altruistic concern for the owner, theft aversion — and “the fixed effort cost of contacting the wallet’s owner.”
Effort is in the equation. It just never varied in the experiment, because every single one of those 17,303 wallets contained three business cards with a working email address on them.
That was the design. The finder did not have to search, guess, post on a local group, hand it to the police or hope. They read a card and typed an email. The whole 40%-to-72% range is a measurement of what happens when an obvious way to reach the owner is sitting right there.
Take the cards out and the study has no outcome to measure. Not a lower number — no number. An honest finder with no route to you produces exactly the same result as a dishonest one: nothing comes back.
That is the real lesson for anyone wondering whether a lost-and-found tag is pointless. The pessimism is aimed at the wrong variable. Goodwill is mostly already there, in numbers that surprised professional economists. What is usually missing is the business card.
Notice, too, how people returned things. Not by finding a phone number and calling a stranger. By sending an email — quiet, asynchronous, no awkward conversation, no obligation to keep talking. The lowest-friction channel available was the one that produced those rates.
What that implies for a tag
If the finder’s goodwill is largely a given and the effort cost is the lever, then the job of a tag is narrow and very specific: make the path from “I found this” to “the owner knows” take about ten seconds.
Every second you add is a place where a willing person quietly gives up. The common ways to lose them:
- “Download our app to report a found item.” Nobody installs an app to do a stranger a favour. This alone kills most returns.
- “Create an account to continue.” Same outcome, faster.
- A bare phone number. It demands a live call with a stranger, which many people will not make from a kerbside — and it hands your number to everyone who ever sees your bag. See what not to put on a luggage tag.
- No instruction at all. A naked QR code with no words next to it asks the finder to guess what happens when they scan. Many will not risk it.
The study’s finders had a business card, a phone in their pocket and about thirty seconds of willingness. A tag has to fit inside that budget. That is the whole design brief.
The design rules that follow
This is why MyTags works the way it does. Each rule below is a direct consequence of the evidence above.
One plain instruction on the tag. Not a logo, not a slogan — a sentence that tells the finder exactly what scanning does: scan to contact the owner. The finder must know the outcome before they act, because uncertainty is friction and friction is the cost we are trying to remove.
A message box that needs no login. Scanning opens a web page, not an app store. There is no account, no signup, no download, no email verification. A found-item message should take one screen and one tap. Any step that asks the finder for something is a step you are paying for out of your own return rate.
No phone call required of anyone. The finder types a line and sends it. That is the email of this study, updated — the quiet, low-commitment channel that people actually use. Nobody has to dial a stranger.
Your details stay hidden. The finder never sees your name, number or email. That is a safety property, but it is also a friction property: a privacy-first tag can afford to be on the outside of your bag, in public, where it can actually be scanned. A tag you are nervous to display is a tag that does nothing.
A reply the finder actually receives. This is the rule people skip. The finder has just done an unpaid favour for a stranger and is now standing there holding your thing, with no idea if the message went anywhere. They get a reply in the same thread — thank you, I’m ten minutes away — so the exchange feels finished, not shouted into a void. Your alert arrives by push and email the moment they hit send.
Something worth returning, made visible. Remember the key: +9.2 points for an object with no resale value, just obvious personal importance. A tag that says this is my child’s hearing aid or she is chipped and much missed at home is doing exactly what that key did. Context is not decoration. It is measurable.
FAQ
Do people return lost items?
More often than most people assume. In the 2019 Science study of 17,303 wallets across 40 countries, 40% of wallets with no cash and 51% of wallets with cash were reported to the owner — rising to 72% when the cash was raised to about US$94. Rates varied widely by country, from 14% to 76%.
Are people less honest when the lost item is valuable?
No — the opposite, and this surprises nearly everyone. Reporting rates rose as the money inside the wallet rose, in 38 of 40 countries. Both ordinary people and academic economists predicted the reverse. The explanation is that keeping something valuable feels more like stealing, so the psychological cost grows faster than the payoff.
Does a QR lost-and-found tag actually increase the odds of getting something back?
It changes the variable that matters. The evidence says most finders are willing; what stops a return is having no obvious way to reach the owner. Every wallet in that study carried a business card with an email address — that was the contact route. A tag is the same thing, attached to your bag and impossible to lose separately.
Why not just write my phone number on my bag?
Because it works against you twice. It exposes your number to everyone who sees your bag, and it asks the finder to make a live call to a stranger — the highest-friction option there is. A QR tag lets someone send a quick message instead, with your number never shown.
How long should it take a finder to contact me?
About ten seconds: point the camera, tap the link, type a line, send. If your setup needs an app, an account or a phone call, assume a large share of honest finders will stop partway.
The research says the goodwill is already out there, in more places and larger numbers than anyone predicts — including the experts paid to predict it. What it cannot supply is the business card.
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