Hitchhiking is my favorite way of transportation. I did it a lot and I did it in Spain, England, Portugal, France, Austria, Germany, Poland and Swiss. I got to know a huge variety of interesting people and on top of that it’s for free. When I managed to go a long tour of about 1000 kms in one day i’ve felt energised and quite happy about my day spent on the road, meeting all these people coming from different backgrounds.
On the other hand, I never quite liked to travel by shared-rides. Shared-rides basically means that you meet random people who are going into the same direction in advance and you split the gasoline costs. In Germany this is usually much cheaper than taking the train or the bus and it could also be called organized hitchhiking as you will also meet strangers who agreed to take you with them. But to me it just feels less good and less exciting than actual hitchhiking.
I put a lot of thoughts into why I felt better hitchhiking and I was sure that it wasn’t the money part.
Having just read the chapter “the cost of social norms” of predictably irrational by Dan Ariely it made me realize what it really is what makes me feel better and I would like to point it out here:
We live in two worlds: one characterised by social exchanges and the other characterised by market exchanges.
And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships.
Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships.
This is so true! In my now 4 years career as a hitchhiker I have never been asked for money for a ride and not paying money for the ride will put the experience in the world characterised by social exchanges. I wouldn’t dare to not talk to my driver or not to share some experiences which would eventually make him laugh. The money issue is completely irrelevant in that context as they are going where I am going anyway and if they have a spare place, they can take me. Moreover the relationship between the driver and the hitchhiker is being enforced because of the solely fact that he is doing it for free. In fact, sometimes it is like meeting an old friend whereas it is completely not like that. I have seen more than 300 cars from the inside while hitchhiking and I have never met any of the drivers again.
Furthermore paying for a ride will put the experience in the world characterised by market exchanges. Having payed for the ride I could think of doing something better than talking to all the random people I will never meet again anyway and after 20 minutes driving I would probably get my Macbook out and start to work or hack on something.
The surprising truth about what motivates us to engage in things, may it be work, a project or a social event, is far more complicated then money driven. The book Drive by Daniel H. Pink writes about this phenomena.
