I base that on 40 years of life experience and travel and living in a variety of communities.

But there's overwhelming evidence of it, an BTW I'm not saying 'religious' per say, but 'church attendance' which is a much stronger overlap with conscientious behaviours.

[1] [2] [3]

People who doubt that regular church attenders are more likely to 'return wallets' I think have little exposure to classical religious communities. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I've found so many people who have no exposure to it have weird and cynical ideas about mainline religions. I'm constantly surprised.

In the very example given: Japan, where 'nobody keeps found wallets' - this is a culture of 'strong cultural ('small c') conservatism and communitarianism. Obviously with shades of ethnocentrism. They're not religious in the same way Westerners are, but they have a whole set of super concientious behaviours perfectly consistent with those here who are 'religous service attenders'

The best analogues in the West are basically agrarian communities, who by the way happen to be religious, or at least 'church attenders'. About 2 generations ago, in the West, most people lived in agrarian communities, even if they weren't farmers, they were tied to that lifestyle, attended service, yada, yada. You lose your wallet there, and nobody will steal it.

In my home town, my grandparents generally did not lock the door to their house. My father still generally does not lock his door.

Now - 99% of my grandparents and their peers attended Church, but they were mainline religions (I'm in Canada, we don't have a lot of this Evangelical, Baptist or Mormon kind of stuff) - but they were not what we would not refer to as specifically 'religious'. I mean everyone did it, it's just what people did. Nobody ran around talking about 'Jesus' etc. - rather, it's more or less part of cultural tradition. Watch UK television series that are set in smaller towns to get an idea.

In my cultural background the thought of keeping someone's wallet is unthinkable. It's obviously and clearly immoral. You probably 'know the person' who lost it anyhow.

The oddest thing about making the transition from more agrarian/communitarian cultures to the more urban one's is how self-oriented everyone seems in the city (i.e. how people could possibly consider 'keeping wallets'), but doubly odd is how they are so cynical they can't fathom that there are groups of people for whom 'returning wallets' is normative and moral action, not something of note. And I'm not harping on 'city folk' (I am born and mostly raised urban), and there are many great things here, rather pointing out the agrarian/communitarian's perspective.

Tons of data to support the relationship between religion and low crime, but FYI I think they overstate it a little bit, if you look carefully you find again 'attendance' more of a predictor of low crime than even 'faith' for example. I think it's just as much about conscientious behavior.

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/no-time-for-crim...

[2] http://marripedia.org/effects_of_religious_practice_on_crime...

[3] https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article-abstract/78/2/192/30...