Trust grows with use and decays with disuse

Evidence

And finally what are we to make of the point made recently by Professor Albert Hirschman: that trust, like other moral resources, grows with use and decays with disuse? — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 849

Partha Dasgupta explores the role of trust in economic transactions, shows how rational agents may be expected to search actively for it, and demonstrates that trust is a peculiar resource which is increased, rather than depleted, through use. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 80

How is trust created? How is it perpetuated? Why is it not present when it is not? Why is it there when it is there, and why does it break down when it does? How can it be built up again when it breaks down? And finally what are we to make of the point made recently by Professor Albert Hirschman: that trust, like other moral resources, grows with use and decays with disuse? — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 849

Categorization

• XREF: Hirschman’s moral-resources claim parallels the reputation-based enforcement in the diamond trade — trust accumulates through exercise, contradicting pure depletion models of social capital.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does this growth-with-use model interact with Saramago’s scenario where a single crisis exhausts trust entirely?
• CANDY: A brief quotable nugget: moral resources as use-it-or-lose-it goods.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 849; Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 80