Honest Tea Holds 7th Annual National Honestly Index Event: "Americans Overwhelmingly Honest"

BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Honesty and integrity are the big winners in the latest National Honesty Index, an annual fun and unscientific social experiment conducted by Honest Tea, Inc. This year’s results showed 93% of Americans are honest, compared to 94% in 2015. Women proved to be more honest than men for the seventh year in a row, and redheads were the most honest of any other hair color. Honolulu and Austin ranked as the most honest cities in America, while Denver was found to be the least honest.

The National Honesty Index is a fun social experiment that tests the honesty of Americans by setting up unmanned racks of Honest beverages offered for $1 on the honor system. From June 12- July 26, 2016, Honest Tea monitored thousands of interactions at 24 different locations across the country to see how honest people are when no one appears to be looking. Information was collected at each site including the number of people who paid or took their beverages without paying. The social experiment also tracked participants’ observable characteristics of gender and hair color.“It’s always uplifting to see that when given the chance, the majority of people choose to do the right thing,” said Ami Mathur, Honest Tea’s brand marketing general manager. “Year after year, our National Honesty Index experiment continues to prove that no matter who you are or what city you’re from, people almost always choose honesty over the alternative.”

“This is Honest Tea’s seventh year running our National Honesty Index social experiment,” said Seth Goldman, Co-Founder and TeaEO Emeritus of Honest Tea. “It’s refreshing to see that our light-hearted experiment continues to engage Americans around the themes of honesty and transparency, and maybe even regard their neighbors with a little more trust.”

Highlights of the 2016 National Honesty Index include:

• Honolulu was the most honest city in America for the third time at 100% honest.
• Austin, a new city added this year, was a close second at 99% honest.
• Women proved to be more honest than men for the seventh year in a row, edging their male counterparts out 95% to 92% honest.
• Redheads came out as the most honest hair color with 97%. Last year’s most honest, brunettes, fell to the bottom as the least honest at 92%.

The complete National Honesty Index results are available at www.NationalHonestyIndex.com.

Honest Tea will donate all funds collected from the on-site social experiments to FoodCorps, an organization that connects kids to real food and better nutrition.

The experiment comes at the culmination of a summer-long program in which Honest Tea encouraged Americans to share honest moments using the hashtag #RefreshinglyHonest. People who shared their #RefreshinglyHonest moments were entered into a sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to the most honest city in America -- Honolulu, HI. The #RefreshinglyHonest Project also included a video documentary series revealing what happens when a few Americans decided to be a little more honest in their daily lives. To learn more, visit www.honesttea.com/refreshinglyhonest.

ABOUT Honest® Tea

Honest Tea, Inc. seeks to create and promote great-tasting, organic beverages and extend economic opportunities to communities in need. Founded in 1998 in Bethesda, MD, Honest Tea is the nation's top-selling organic bottled tea company, specializing in beverages that are Just a Tad Sweet®. Honest Tea’s product lines include: Honest® ready-to-drink bottled teas, Honest Kids® organic juice drinks, Honest® freshly brewed iced tea, Honest Summer Refreshers™, and Honest Fizz® zero calorie sodas. All drinks are USDA Organic, and all tea leaf varieties and cane sugar are Fair Trade Certified®. Honest Tea is a multi-year winner of awards from the Alliance for Workplace Excellence and a Montgomery County, MD Certified Green Business. In 2011, The Coca-Cola Company fully acquired Honest Tea, and there are passionate teams in both Bethesda, MD and Atlanta, GA--as well as across the country & around the world--working together to grow the brand. For more information, visit https://www.honesttea.com/, Facebook.com/HonestTea, and twitter.com/HonestTea.