I found a college girl’s wallet last year on a terribly stormy night. I tracked down several of her social media accounts. She didn’t reply to any of my messages. After 2 days of no replies I drove to her house and no one was there. I left the wallet in the mailbox. About a month later, I got a reply that said she had left town to visit family for a month and just now seen one of the messages I had sent. She said she had just replaced her CC’s and her basic attitude was kind of “whatever” about it. I didn’t want a reward but I actually spent a lot of time tracking her down to be nice and her dismissive tone was a bit of a bummer. At least she replied. Would of driven my nuts not knowing if she ever got it back.
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After swimming during my lunch break (had half-time position while in grad school), I took them off to put on some lotion. I left them on the bench next to the lockers. I returned to the office and went to twist my rings – and uh oh. I ran 3/4 of a mile back to the locker room in heels. When I got there, I found a cryptic note.
The student left them with the locker attendant along with her phone #. The employee told me that she’d work there for 16 years and no one ever turned in anything, much less jewelry.
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I’d be inclined to suspect that the “go to the trouble” part is a major factor.
The amount of hassle involved is close to constant(assuming identifying information is available; and there isn’t so much money that you’d be a bit nervous about stepping into the picture); and that hassle is taken right out of your own day rather than out of the ‘free’ but potentially morally tainted money you could get away with keeping.
Maybe I’m just a bad person; but I don’t think I have enough prosocial instincts to work very hard at returning an empty wallet when whoever dropped it can just get a new one for under $20. If someone is doing an obvious search nearby, sure, that’s trivial effort; or if I can find a nominally responsible thing to do(lost and found; employee of location discovered, etc.); but any real hassle? Probably not.
It’s a lot easier to work up a little altruism when the contents would clearly ruin someone’s day to lose. Forms of ID that are a huge hassle to replace; cash; objects suggesting sentimental value; that sort of thing.
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I once found a nokia phone smashed on the road at a tram stop outside Melbourne Uni. Recovered the bits, put it back together and searched the address book for likely numbers. “Home” went to +60 and I wasn’t going to tell this family in Malaysia where I had found their kids phone so I tried the most commonly called number and he turned out to be the girl’s boyfriend so I was able to return her phone, mostly in bits though.
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Research assistants walked into post offices, hotels, police stations, banks, museums or similar places, approached someone at the reception desk and said “Hi, I found this on the street around the corner.” They slid the wallet toward the person, saying “Somebody must have lost it. I’m in a hurry and have to go. Can you please take care of it?”
…
Christian Zünd, a doctoral student and co-author, said a survey they conducted found that “without money, not reporting a wallet doesn’t feel like stealing.
Well, it isn’t stealing in the scenario described, unless the receptionists or whoever take it home. If they just chuck it in the lost property bin and forget about, it may not be the nicest thing to do, but it’s not theft, any more than ignoring a lost wallet in the middle of the street would be.
(Morally, I mean. Legally, no idea.)
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That quote seems to line up with the advice that you see so often about getting out of debt—i.e., to get rid of credit cards and use cash for everything instead, because spending cash feels much more real, whereas using credit cards doesn’t feel so much like you’re actually spending money.
Edit-- Also, I agree with you that ignoring a lost wallet isn’t really stealing…but it brings up interesting questions about our mutual survival and the general social pact…Are we in effect stealing something intangible from the general good when we act in a self-centered manner (e.g., thinking I’m too busy to go out of my way to follow up on this)? Do we somehow lessen, in some small way, the sense of security among fellow human beings, the idea that others might look out for us, that (I imagine) everyone would like to have?
I would say yes. It’s a sort of materialist karma: the way you act towards others affects (indirectly and not necessarily immediately) the probabilities of whether others will act towards you in a welcome or unwelcome fashion.
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You should post your story on r/ChoosingBeggars, so that someone can turn it into a monetized YouTube video. 
I found a young woman’s wallet some years back. It was on the sidewalk by a bus stop near my house, and I imagined that she had dropped it getting on or off the bus.
It had no money in it, but it did have her driver’s license (with her home-town address on it—a town about eighty miles away) and her college ID (from an out-of-state college). I figured she would want those.
I looked online to find a phone number for her but didn’t find anything—I assume because she probably only had a cell phone. I did find a phone number for her parents at the home address, but I didn’t want to call them because I thought it could possibly get her in trouble with them, who knows.
I found that she was on facebook—and then I actually signed up for facebook just so I could leave her a private message there. But she didn’t respond to that. So I put up a sign at the bus stop where I had found the wallet, saying [Her first name], I found your wallet, call me! No response.
So I’m sitting with her wallet in my house for a few days, feeling weirdly guilty about having it in my possession. I looked in it again and found there was also a library card for the local public library here—the only local thing in the wallet. So I called the library and said I knew they would never give me her number, but could they contact her and give her my number? The kind librarian did just that, and very soon I got a call from the young woman.
She said that the wallet had been in the outside pocket of her backpack, and she was shopping in a grocery store about a mile from where I found it, but when she went to pay for the groceries the wallet wasn’t there. She said she never was at the bus stop where I found it. So then I figured that someone stole it and just took any cash out and then dropped it in my neighborhood.
Anyway the young woman was living not far away from me, and she came over to my house to get the wallet. When I handed it to her the first thing she did was look in it expectantly, and then she got a look on her face that seemed like a combination of disappointment and disgust. I don’t remember her thanking me, just taking the wallet and leaving. I was left with the icky feeling that maybe she thought that I had found the wallet with cash in it and kept whatever cash was in it for myself 
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If you find a wallet without money. There’s the awkward possibility the owner, when you contact them will ask…Well where’s the money?
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Found a wallet (or was it a small purse?) outside work one night. Called up the owner and said that we’d already divided the cash and credit cards among ourselves, but she might want to stop by to pick up her library card.
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What is the shape of the cash vs return probability? Is the expected value of carrying more cash positive or negative?
A key part of this study is that the wallets were transparent - I understand that to mean than the money was visible before the person picked it up. So I’m guessing it’s more likely for a wallet with money to be picked up in the first place. Once picked up, people probably feel a greater obligation to return. As for the money, maybe people feel like $13 is an insignificant sum, so it’s not as important to return. Though I think the ID and key would be things that people would feel more obligated to return than the cash.
I’m interested to see the geographic data; which countries or cities are more likely to return? Also, I’d be curious to see future studies involving gender and race variations, and maybe differences in things like job title. Are people more or less likely to return to someone whose job title is “marketing assistant” vs “hedge fund manager?”
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