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SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City was named the most honest city in America. A group with Honest Tea did an experiment based on the honor code, and Utahans passed with flying colors.
Honest Tea, the nation's top-selling organic bottled tea company, held an experiment across the country travelling from city to city to rate the honesty of Americans.
The company set up more than 50 unmanned kiosks in over 30 cities across the country. Each location had a stand stocked full of Honest Tea products that were selling for a dollar. But, the money was given strictly on the honor code and the results were caught on hidden cameras.
The consumers were placed into several different categories defined by noticeable characteristics such as hair color, sex, baseball fans, comic book fans, people with kids and more.
- 93% of participants were honest
- Salt Lake City and Oakland were both 100% honest
- Women are 95% honest while men are 91% honest
- Boston baseball fans are more honest than New York baseball fans
- Redheads are more honest than blondes and brunettes
- Motorcyclists were 92% honest while Comic Book fans were 86% honest
- Men with beards were 96% honest while bald men were 85% honest
Among the different cities, Salt Lake City and Oakland residents were the only ones with 100 percent honesty.
Honest Tea will donate the money collected from the experiment plus an additional amount to City Year, an AmeriCorps program which unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service.
"While the National Honesty Index measured consumer's honesty in almost three times as many cities as last year, it was great to see that by and large, people across the country are honest," said Peter Kaye, Honest Tea Vice President of Marketing.
