Social Norms in Corruption: A Bribery Experiment (original) (raw)
Related papers
The effect of social norms on bribe offers
The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 2018
We report a sequential bribery game to disentangle the effect of descriptive social norms and sanctions on bribe offers. Participants who knew that they were interacting with a partner from a group with a majority of corrupt (as opposed to honest) partners offered twice as many bribes. This effect of norms occurred independently of strategic considerations and the possibility of being sanctioned. Indeed, the effect of sanctions was not significant. These findings highlight a causal connection from perceptions of bribery to actual behavior.
The Effect of Prescriptive Norms and Negative Externalities on Bribery Decisions
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
Corruption is a welfare issue worldwide, but it is difficult to study because of its secret nature. We here did a lab economic experiment on bribery to study different compliance mechanisms through which people might be deterred from corruption. We focused on two elements of norms which people might respond to: information about the function of the norm (to avoid harm to third parties) and information about the prescriptive content of the norm (rights and duties). We show that information about both negative externalities of bribery and prescriptive norms are effective deterrents, and that bribe offers and acceptances are most discouraged with their synergic interaction. We find that participants followed prescriptive information, even when it was inefficient to do so, and implied choosing against their material self-interest (by rejecting a bribe) and not reciprocating bribe offers. Such compliance regardless of costs to the self and to others suggests a rule-based " mindless" process, like a normative heuristic. We conclude by highlighting the relevance of these findings as behavioral insights in the elaboration of strategies to combat corruption and norm transgressions.
Rationality and Society, 2019
In most Bribery Games (BGs) in the literature, there is no mention of rights and duties associated to participants´rolesparticipants´roles. Authors have hitherto relied on loaded frames, negative externalities, and the possibility of sanctions to implicitly signal prescriptive norms. We argue that participantsínterpretation of these factors may not be univocal. In the present study, a participant in the role of a common citizen either did or did not acquire the right to obtain a monetary benefit, and could offer a bribe to an associated participant in the role of public official. This participant, in turn, had an explicit duty of providing the benefit only if the citizen acquired the right to it. Conditions with/without the acquisition of the right were crossed with the presence/absence of negative externalities associated with transgressions of the official´s duty. One last (fifth) condition mimicked other BGs in the literature which rely on loaded frames and negative externalities but no information on rights and duties. We found that both the presence of externalities and information about rights were effective bribery deterrents, and that bribe offers and acceptances were most discouraged with their synergic effect. Interestingly, officials followed prescriptive information even when it was inefficient to do so (when there were no externalities), and implied choosing against their material self-interest (by rejecting a bribe), and not reciprocating bribe offers. We conclude by highlighting the limits of making generalizations from results without explicit normative information, and the relevance of present findings as anti-corruption behavioral insights.
Friend or foe? Social ties in bribery and corruption
Experimental Economics, 2020
This paper studies how social ties interact with bribery and corruption. In the laboratory, subjects are in triads where two ‘performers’ individually complete an objective real-effort task and an evaluator designates one of them as the winner of a monetary prize. In one treatment dimension, we vary whether performers can bribe the evaluator—where any bribe made is non-refundable, irrespective of the evaluator’s decision. A second treatment dimension varies the induced social ties between the evaluator and the performers. The experimental evidence suggests that both bribes and social ties may corrupt evaluators’ decisions. Bribes decrease the importance of performance in the decision. The effect of social ties is asymmetric. While performers’ bribes vary only little with their ties to the evaluator, evaluators exhibit favoritism based on social ties when bribes are not possible. This ‘social-tie-based’ corruption is, however, replaced by bribe-based corruption when bribes are possib...
Social Class and Attitudes toward Bribery
In Robert W. McGee & Serkan Benk (Eds.), The Ethics of Bribery: Theoretical and Empirical Studies. (pp. xxx-xxx). Switzerland: Springer, forthcoming, 2023
The present study is part of a much larger study that examined the ethics of bribery and the ethics of tax evasion from a variety of perspectives. In this study, data were taken from the most recent World Values Survey. Forty-eight countries were included in the study. Social class was often a significant demographic variable. However, no clear pattern emerged regarding which social class was most or least opposed to bribe taking.
Journal of Public Economics, 2009
This paper examines cultural differences in individual-decision making in an experimental corruption game. Higher levels of exposure to corruption in daily life may promote a tolerance of corruption that is reflected in norms of behavior. We explore whether, in environments characterized by lower levels of corruption, there is both a lower propensity to engage in corrupt behavior and a higher propensity to punish corrupt behavior. Based on experiments run in Australia (Melbourne), India (Delhi), Indonesia (Jakarta) and Singapore, we find that there is a greater variation in the propensities to punish corrupt behavior than in the propensities to engage in corrupt behavior across cultures. Consistent with the existing corruption indices, the subjects in India exhibit a higher tolerance of corruption than the subjects in Australia. However, the subjects in Singapore have a higher tolerance of corruption than the subjects in Indonesia. We conjecture that this is due to the nature of the recent institutional changes in these two countries. We also vary our experimental design to examine the impact of a more effective punishment system and the effect of the perceived cost of bribery.
Transparency and Altruistic Punishment in an Experimental Model of Cooperation to Corruption Through Economic Games, 2024
This work integrates cooperation, punishment, treasury damage, and norms transgression in three variants of a single experimental model of corruption. Participants formed words with predetermined letters, receiving a reward for each word, besides an individual reward taken from the common fund if they reached the goal. A manipulation in the letters made it impossible to reach the goal, so reporting exceeding it implied cheating for a benefit. Three studies model the effects of signaling, descriptive norms, and the possibility of punishing or investigating corruption acts (transparency). 248 participants were randomly assigned to the conditions of each study. Significatively less cheating behavior was found in reports of words and earnings in Studies 1 and 3, but not in Study 2. The experimental model reveals the potential of transparency as an alternative to diminishing corruption with less social cost than altruistic punishment. The relevance of these results for implementing public policies was discussed.
Bribery as Negotiation: A Decision Making Perspective
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
The majority of research in conflict management focuses conflict resolution: the process of reaching a mutually beneficial solution for the negotiating parties. However, in some cases, the negotiation may impart substantial negative externalities onto third parties, so resolving the conflict may not be a socially optimal solution. Bribery is one such example: potential bribe-givers and birbe-takers often have to negotiate on the price, speed and quality of services. The outcome of a "successful" negotiation may be a structurally unsound building, or a driver"s license holder who cannot drive. The current paper examines bribery from a behavioral decision making perspective, zooming in on the economic and moral motivations of the negotiating parties and argues that the assignment of moral responsibility for bribery exchanges may play a significant role in the process.
Gender and corruption: insights from an experimental analysis
University of …, 2005
In recent years, a substantial body of work has emerged in the social sciences exploring differences in the behavior of men and women in various contexts. This paper contributes to this literature by investigating gender differences in attitudes towards corruption. It departs from the previous literature on gender and corruption by using experimental methodology. Attitudes towards corruption play a critical role in the persistence of corruption. Based on experimental data collected in Australia (Melbourne), India (Delhi), Indonesia (Jakarta) and Singapore, we show that while women in Australia are less tolerant of corruption than men in Australia, there are no significant gender differences in attitudes towards corruption in India, Indonesia and Singapore. Hence, our findings suggest that the gender differences found in the previous studies may not be nearly as universal as stated and may be more culture-specific. We also explore behavioral differences by gender across countries and find that there are larger variations in women's attitudes towards corruption than in men's across the countries in our sample.
Does corruption affect cooperation? A laboratory experiment
Latin American Economic Review, 2016
In this paper, we analyze the nature of cooperation in different corruption regimes. In a laboratory experiment with university students in Mexico, individuals play first a corruption game and then a public goods game. The corruption game is divided into three groups: high-and low-monitoring scenarios as well as a control group not exposed to the game. The public goods game is divided into three groups: the standard game, a game with centralized punishment executed by an exogenously assigned leader, and a game similar to the second one, but adding the possibility of counter-punishment. There are four key results. First, there is more corruption in the low-monitoring group. Second, in the public goods game there is less cooperation in the low-monitoring group than in the group with more intensive monitoring. Third, the option of punishment increases cooperation, but the sensitivity to punishment is greater in the high-monitoring (low-corruption) group. Fourth, the option of counter-punishment of the leader decreases cooperation. Our results highlight the importance of corruption in decreasing trust and social capital and show the difficulty of promoting cooperation when corruption is prevalent.