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The Effect of Social Norms on Bribe Offers
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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.
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... According to studies by Abbink et al., (2018), Kobis et al., (2022), and Lan and Hong (2017), the exchange of bribes in various ways has thrived in public project procurement and delivery due to the influence of traditional practices in different societies. In a study conducted by Banerjee (2016), it was mentioned that bribery is influenced by social norms, as the perceived sense of social acceptability greatly impacts the decision-making process regarding giving or receiving bribes. ...
... According to the table, participants acknowledged that bribery could manifest in various forms, such as kickbacks, expensive gifts, extortion, unlawful gratuities, conflicts of interest, commissions, facilitation payments, hospitality, influence peddling, solicitation, and extortion. In their studies, Ameyaw et al., (2017), Abbink et al., (2018), Ameh and Odusami (2010), and Amundsen (2000) identified kickbacks, expensive gifts, and commissions as types of bribery in project implementation, aligning with the findings of the participants. ...
... It entails the exchange of money for services or advantages. Kickback is both unlawful and immoral, as it subverts equitable competition in the procurement of public projects (Abbink et al., 2018). Kickback is different from other forms of bribery, such as facilitation payments, unlawful gratuities, and influence peddling. ...
Over the past few decades, Nigeria has made strides in combating corruption through anti-corruption laws and dedicated institutions. Despite these efforts, concerns persist about the misuse of accepted practices to undermine these laws, particularly in the construction industry. This study examines the impact of bribery on the Nigerian construction sector and the conflicts between social norms and anti-corruption measures. The study reveals an artificial gap between bribery laws and social norms, exploited by individuals with questionable motives to legitimise their actions. Societal expectations often view bribery as necessary for establishing legitimate and socially approved connections. While the cultural practice of gift-giving can enhance performance and efficiency, its association with bribery hinders effectiveness and creates challenges for public procurement officers. Overall, the study highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of cultural practices in anti-corruption efforts and suggests that aligning legal frameworks with social norms is crucial for the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures in Nigeria's construction industry.
... For example, American anti-corruption legislation historically offers specific exemptions for 'facilitating payments,' a form of private-to-private bribery used to facilitate the completion of private sector transactions, in foreign countries (Argandoña, 2005;Gopinath, 2008). Given the clear negative relationship between anti-bribery norms and bribery susceptibility (for example, see Köbis et al., 2015;Banerjee, 2016;Abbink et al., 2018;Senci et al., 2019), people should be expected to be more susceptible to private-to-private bribery than to public bribery, implying higher levels of privateto-private bribery than public bribery. Further, when treatment effects depend on individuals' heuristic adherence to norms-which is true of the FLE-the weaker norms against private-to-private bribery imply lower heuristic adherence to such norms, which may impact the effects of interventions designed to change such heuristic adherence. ...
... Under a rational choice framework, bribery acceptance confers lower risk and higher rewards than bribery offering, which implies that rational actors are more likely to accept a bribe than to offer one. Under a norm-centric framework, because descriptive norms against bribery are perceived to be lower when accepting a bribe than when offering a bribe, the aforementioned negative relationship between descriptive norms against bribery and bribery activity (see Köbis et al., 2015;Banerjee, 2016;Abbink et al., 2018;Senci et al., 2019) also implies that people are more likely to accept than to offer bribes. Additionally, as is discussed in the next section, the lower risk and weaker norms associated with bribery acceptance compared to bribery offering may alter treatment effects that depend on heuristic moral or risk-related decision-making. ...
Theory and evidence from the behavioral science literature suggest that the widespread and rising use of lingua francas in the workplace may impact the ethical decision-making of individuals who must use foreign languages at work. We test the impact of foreign language usage on individuals’ susceptibility to bribery in workplace settings using a vignette-based randomized controlled trial in a Dutch student sample. Results suggest that there is not even a small foreign language effect on workplace bribery susceptibility. We combine traditional null hypothesis significance testing with equivalence testing methods novel to the business ethics literature that can provide statistically significant evidence of bounded or null relationships between variables. These tests suggest that the foreign language effect on workplace bribery susceptibility is bounded below even small effect sizes. Post hoc analyses provide evidence suggesting fruitful further routes of experimental research into bribery.
... To move beyond correlations and credibly identify causal effects, scholars have implemented randomized experiments. Köbis et al. (2015), Abbink et al. (2018), and Schram et al. (2022) randomly assign descriptive norms (empirical expectations) in the lab by informing participants about how many others engage in bribery. They find that participants are more willing to engage in bribery when they are told that bribery is widespread. ...
Corruption, the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, has long been understood to respond to costs and benefits as shaped by the law. Increasingly, informal norms are also receiving attention as drivers of corrupt behavior and as potential policy targets to combat corruption. This chapter surveys existing scholarship about how informal norms affect behavior, how they interact with the law, and how they might be influenced through policy interventions to combat corruption. The reader seeking fully crafted answers and policy recipes will not find them here. Instead, this chapter aims to highlight promising ideas, suggestive evidence, and avenues for future research and policy development.
... Así, por ejemplo, cuando se quiere explicar que una sociedad es corrupta porque proviene de una "cultura corrupta" (esto es: con normas permisivas hacia la corrupción), se están aceptando más supuestos de los que Coleman reconoce. Existe bibliografía que confirma que es mayor la probabilidad de obrar de manera corrupta entre quienes creen que los demás son corruptos (Abbink et al., 2018;Dong, Dulleck & Torgler, 2012;Köbis et al., 2015;Wouda et al., 2017): la flecha . del esquema funcionaría causalmente (como quiere Coleman), pero el nodo . ...
Existen dos niveles de acción, el de la acción colectiva (macro) y el de la individual (micro), que se influyen mutuamente: el macro condiciona las preferencias y oportunidades individuales; las acciones individuales causan los fenómenos macro. Por ello, si bien el objetivo central de las ciencias sociales es explicar los fenómenos sociales, deben también explicar cómo la acción colectiva influye en la individual. Es común ejemplificar lo dicho apelando al “esquema de Coleman”, que ha desempeñado una función heurística en la investigación sociológica. Se argumenta en este trabajo que no todos los fenómenos de acción colectiva son como pretende el esquema, es decir, “objetivos” o comunes a todos los individuos, por lo que el esquema y la metodología requerirían una revisión. En particular, el esquema de Coleman requeriría una revisión para acomodar la distinción entre la acepción descriptiva de norma social, esto es, qué hace la gente normalmente, y la prescriptiva, es decir, cómo debe actuar una persona en determinada situación: son epistemológicamente (y ontológicamente) diferentes, y ambas tienen gran relevancia explicativa para la conducta individual. Además, aportaremos una discusión sobre la percepción de normas sociales y su relevancia en conductas sociales secretas, como la corrupción.
... Previous studies suggest that individuals are more likely to take a bribe when interacting with people from countries (or regions) notorious for a culture of corruption (reflected by the corruption perception index) [43][44][45] or to engage in bribe-offering when bribery is perceived as prevalent. [46][47][48][49] Building on this computational framework, we argue that these norms may amplify the weights placed on material gains, while diminishing the value of moral costs during bribery decisionmaking. ...
Understanding how corrupt behavior occurs is a critical issue at the intersection of behavioral ethics, social psychology, and other related social sciences, laying the foundation for establishing effective anticorruption policies. Despite a substantial body of studies focused on bribe‐taking behavior—a typical form of corruption—and its modulators, its underlying psychological processes remain poorly understood. Drawing inspiration from recent literature on neuroeconomics and moral decision‐making, we argue that bribe‐taking decision‐making involves a value‐based computational process that can be characterized by a computational framework. We show how this framework advances our understanding of bribe‐taking decision‐making by (1) clarifying how the cost–benefit tradeoff determines the decision to accept or reject a bribe and its neural foundations, (2) improving the prediction of bribe‐taking behaviors across contexts and individuals, and (3) enhancing our comprehension of individual differences in bribe‐taking behaviors. Moreover, we delineate how this framework can benefit future research on bribery by examining the mechanisms through which various modulators impact the bribe‐taking behaviors or the computational processes underlying more intricate forms of corrupt behaviors. We also discussed its potential fusion with artificial intelligence techniques in offering insights for understanding cognitive processes underlying bribe‐taking behaviors and designing anticorruption strategies.
... Köbis et al. (2019) found in a field experiment that there was a lower bribery descriptive norm and fewer bribes in a game where participants were exposed to posters with anti-bribery messages. Similarly, Abbink et al. (2018) showed that participants offered twice as many bribes in a game when they knew they were interacting with a person whose companions were mostly corrupt, contrary to when they knew that most were honest. ...
This work integrates cooperation, punishment, damage to the treasury, and the transgression of norms in a single experimental model of corruption. Participants formed words with predetermined letters, receiving a reward for each word, and, if they reached a goal, an extra taken from the common fund. 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 (transparency) corruption acts. 248 participants were randomly assigned to the conditions of each study. Significant differences were 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 of lower social cost than altruistic punishment to diminish corruption. The relevance of these results for implementing public policies was discussed.
The special issue focuses on the social–psychological mechanisms behind corruption, emphasizing the role of social norms, power dynamics, cultural perspectives and gender in shaping corrupt behaviours. The special issue highlights the importance of understanding how shared expectations, cultural influences and organizational structures sustain or mitigate unethical conduct. By integrating interdisciplinary approaches, the collection presents new insights into corruption that go beyond traditional explanations. Studies in the special issue explore interventions targeting social norms to reduce bribery, examine moral judgements of corruption across different cultural contexts, investigate how power asymmetries within organizations perpetuate corruption and show how gendered dynamics, particularly in cases of sextortion, shape responses to corruption. The special issue underscores the significance of using diverse methodologies, including qualitative research, to better understand corruption and inform more effective anti‐corruption policies.
Can norm‐based information campaigns reduce corruption? Such campaigns use messaging about how people typically behave (descriptive norms) or ought to behave (injunctive norms). Drawing on survey and lab experiments in Ukraine, we unpack and evaluate the distinct effects of these two types of social norms. Four findings emerge: First, injunctive‐norm messaging produces consistent but relatively small and temporary effects. These may serve as moderately effective, low‐cost anti‐corruption tools but are unlikely to inspire large‐scale norm transformations. Second, contrary to recent studies, we find no evidence that either type of norm‐based messaging “backfires” by inadvertently encouraging corruption. Third, descriptive‐norm messages emphasizing corruption's decline produce relatively large and long‐lasting effects—but only among subjects who find messages credible. Fourth, both types of norm‐based messaging have a substantially larger effect on younger citizens. These findings have broader implications for messaging campaigns, especially those targeting social problems that, like corruption, require mitigation of collective action dilemmas.
Does the perception of corruption shape the willingness to bribe? This study evaluates the socio-psychological determinants of corruption by measuring how different types of messages influence the probability of engaging in corruption for access to public health, social programs, and official documents. This research uses the social norms approach to explore the link among messaging, perception, and behavior. An online experiment was conducted in Peru for two weeks between October and November 2021, using social media (Facebook) to recruit participants (n = 2584). The participants were divided into two treatment groups and one control group. Those in the treatment groups received informational displays on (i) the perception of corruption as widespread in the public sector (descriptive norm) or (ii) corruption as morally wrong (injunctive norm). The control group did not receive a message. Exposure to messages on corruption increased the overall probability of engaging in corruption. Unexpectedly, those in the injunctive norm group increased their willingness to bribe. Furthermore, this study also found significant differences in bribing behavior based on the different types of public service, gender, and age.
Nudges refer to (public or private) subtle interventions that aim to suggest some course(s) of action to people and steer individual behaviour(s) towards an action whilst preserving personal choice. In this chapter then I examine the Dual-Process approach that makes a distinction between intuitive and deliberate judgements on how we react to nudges, and the key elements of a nudge that might influence our choices and judgements. It is acknowledged, though, that behavioural approaches are a supplement, part of the toolbox of approaches and not a substitute to traditional approaches in nudging healthcare/lifestyle choices. The same criticism is levelled at attempts, depending on the context, in trying to prevent corruption. Nudges are limited where we dismiss, reject and challenge 'suggestions' on how to behave and/or react to an issue. Fatalism is put forward as a reason for the failure of some healthcare and anti-corruption initiatives as the personal, powerless circumstances of life in which (some of us) are placed impacts on our capacity and desire to confront healthcare/lifestyle choices and systemic healthcare corruption.
Social norms play an important role in individual decision making. We argue that two different expectations influence our choice to obey a norm: what we expect others to do (empirical expectations) and what we believe others think we ought to do (normative expectations). Little is known about the relative importance of these two types of expectation in individuals' decisions, an issue that is particularly important when normative and empirical expectations are in conflict (e.g., systemic corruption, high crime cities). In this paper, we report data from Dictator game experiments where we exogenously manipulate dictators' expectations in the direction of either selfishness or fairness. When normative and empirical expectations are in conflict, we find that empirical expectations about other dictators' choices significantly predict a dictator's own choice. However, dictators' expectations regarding what other dictators think ought to be done do not have a significant impact on their decisions after controlling for empirical expectations. Our findings about the crucial influence of empirical expectations are important for designing institutions or policies aimed at discouraging undesirable behavior.
Much hope is put into the ‘‘four eyes principle’’ as an anti corruption device in many countries. However, as recent cases have shown, entire groups of decision makers can be corrupt as well. This paper reports on an experimental investigation of individual versus group decision making in a corruption experiment.
We find that the group decisions, as compared to individual decisions, lead to a higher level of corruption, for bribers and for bribees, and in China as well as in Germany. Only German women are less corrupt in a group decision context than when deciding individually.
Further differences between Germany and China with respect to the effect of the teams’ gender composition were found. In Germany, groups that consist only of females are the most honest and the male groups are the most corrupt, whereas in China the groups with mixed gender combination have shown a higher inclination to make corrupt decisions than the groups that are homogenous with respect to gender.
In recent years a growing body of empirical investigations has examined the causes and consequences of corruption. These investigations are mostly cross–country analyses, based on comparative assessments of the extent of corruption in various countries. Such assessments are sometimes compiled by private agencies to determine country risks, and the data gathered are sold to investors. Other sources are surveys of the general public or elite businesspeople. The data on corruption are thus based on sub¬jective perceptions and expertise, and empirical work using these indices assumes that they are correlated with underlying real levels of corruption. With the exception of some micro-level studies, perceptions data are the only information available on corruption levels. Efforts to use objective data, such as convictions for corruption or abuse of office, suffer from inherent biases that undermine their validity and are not available across a large cross-section of countries. Recognizing the limitations of perception-based indices, researchers have nevertheless been able to use them to significantly advance the study of corruption. These data allow empirical research on corruption to move beyond the anecdotal descriptions and purely theoretical considerations that previously dominated. This chapter reviews these studies and summarizes what we have learned.
The paper studies the link between corruption and social capital (measured as trust), using data from a lab experiment. Subjects play either a harassment bribery game or a strategically identical but differently framed ultimatum game, followed by a trust game. In a second experiment, we elicit social appropriateness norm of actions in the bribery game and the ultimatum game treatments. Our experimental design allows us to examine whether subjects, who have been asked to pay a bribe, are less likely to trust than those in an isomorphic role in the ultimatum game. We also uncover the underlying mechanism behind any such behavioral spillover. Results suggest that a) there is a negative spillover effect of corruption on trust and the effect increases with decrease in social appropriateness norm of the bribe demand; b) lower trust in the bribery game treatment is explained by lower expected return on trust; c) surprisingly, for both the bribery and the ultimatum game treatments, social appropriateness norm violation engenders the decay in trust through its adverse effect on belief about trustworthiness.
In recent years, the detrimental effects of bureaucratic corruption gained attention from development economists as well as interna- tional financial institutions and policymakers. Corruption, which was previously ignored and mentioned only with caution, has taken a center stage. Nonetheless, corruption is not a new phenomenon. It is as old as government itself. The current literature on corruption high- lights its harmful effects on growth (see Klitgaard 1988, Shleifer and Vishny 1993, Mauro 1995, Cheung 1996, and Bardhan 1997). How- ever, until recently the growth literature did not adequately explain why corruption is low in some countries and endemic in others.1 The relevant analytical problem is not to assess the harmfulness of cor- ruption but why different political systems foster different levels of corruption. We cannot discern any useful prognosis from the litera- ture on corruption so long as the causes of corruption are not clearly identified. Moreover, the empirical studies on the effects of corrup- tion on economic growth are besieged by endogeneity problems. Few of these empirical studies take into account the possibility that eco- nomic growth or the lack of it can increase or decrease the level of corruption. This article seeks to fill that gap by identifying the determinants of corruption and by examining the extent to which those factors—such as education, political regimes, the type of the state, ethnicity, judicial
Past studies on laboratory corruption games have not been able to find consistent evidence that subjects make “immoral” decisions. A possible reason, and also a critique of laboratory corruption games, is that the experiment may fail to trigger the intended immorality frame in the minds of the participants, leading many to question the very raison d’être of laboratory corruption games. To test this idea, we compare behavior in a harassment bribery game with a strategically identical but neutrally framed ultimatum game. The results show that fewer people, both as briber and bribee, engage in corruption in the bribery frame than in the alternative and the average bribe amount is lesser in the former than in the latter. These suggest that moral costs are indeed at work. A third treatment, which relabels the bribery game in neutral language, indicates that the observed treatment effect arises not from the neutral language of the ultimatum game but from a change in the sense of entitlement between the bribery and ultimatum game frames. To provide further support that the bribery game does measure moral costs, we elicit the shared perceptions of appropriateness of the actions or social norm, under the two frames. We show that the social norm governing the bribery game frame and ultimatum game frame are indeed different and that the perceived sense of social appropriateness plays a crucial role in determining the actual behavior in the two frames. Furthermore, merely relabelling the bribery game in neutral language makes no difference to the social appropriateness norm governing it. This indicates that, just as in the case of actual behavior, the observed difference in social appropriateness norm between bribery game and ultimatum game comes from the difference in entitlement too. Finally, we comment on the external validity of behavior in lab corruption games.
Do short-term changes in anti-corruption policy inhibit or exacerbate corruption in the long run? In this paper, we observe the long-run impact of a short-run punishment institution on one particular type of corrupt transaction: bribery. The degree to which participants share a corruption "norm" is varied by conducting our study in two cultures: US and Pakistan, countries that have very different levels of corruption. Bribery is implemented in the laboratory as a repeated three-player sequential game, consisting of a firm, a government official and a citizen. The design has a within-subject ABA structure, with pre-punishment, punishment, and post-punishment phases. While the short run punishment institution has an effect in the short term (while enforcement is available), behavior largely returns to the pre-punishment levels once enforcement is removed. The small, statistically insignificant reductions in corrupt behavior in the post-punishment phase do not vary by culture. We show that short run institutions are largely ineffective in constraining behavior in the long run, and that sustained legal enforcement is necessary to constrain corruption, regardless of the corruption norms in the society.
Do crackdowns on bribery exacerbate corruption in the long run? In this paper, we observe the long-run impact of a short-term punishment institution (i.e. a crackdown) on bribery. We conduct lab experiments in two countries with cultures that differ in corruption norms, and have very different levels of bribery: US and Pakistan. Bribery is implemented in the laboratory as a repeated three-player sequential game, consisting of a firm, a government official and a citizen. The design consists of three phases: pre-crackdown, crackdown, and post-crackdown. Results show that, while the crackdown has an immediate effect on bribery, behavior returns to the pre-crackdown levels once enforcement is removed. Post-crackdown behavior is not significantly different from the pre-crackdown phase in either country. We conclude that crackdowns are largely ineffective in impacting behavior in the long run, and that sustained legal enforcement is necessary to constrain bribery, regardless of the norms that prevail in the society.