Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:04:56.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social norms of corruption in the field: social nudges on posters can help to reduce bribery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2019

NILS C. KÖBIS Open the ORCID record for NILS C. KÖBIS [Opens in a new window] ,
MARLEEN TROOST ,
CYRIL O. BRANDT  and
IVAN SORAPERRA
NILS C. KÖBIS*
Affiliation:
Center for Research in Experimental Economics and political Decision-making (CREED), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
MARLEEN TROOST
Affiliation:
Center for Research in Experimental Economics and political Decision-making (CREED), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
CYRIL O. BRANDT
Affiliation:
Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
IVAN SORAPERRA
Affiliation:
Center for Research in Experimental Economics and political Decision-making (CREED), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
*
*Correspondence to: Center for Research in Experimental Economics and political Decision-making (CREED), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Corruption in the form of bribery continues to be a major societal challenge around the world. The current lab-in-the-field study tested whether dynamic descriptive norms messages on posters can help to reduce bribery. Before, during and after placing posters throughout a medium-sized South African town, incentivized measures of social norms and bribery were assessed in a mobile lab. A total of 311 participants stemming from the general population took part. In line with the pre-registered predictions, the results reveal that people: (1) perceive bribery to be less common; and (b) engage in bribery in a corruption game less frequently when the posters were displayed. The discussion outlines how social norms nudging campaigns can be leveraged to spur collective action against corruption.

Type
Article
Information
Behavioural Public Policy , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 597 - 624
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbink, K. et al. (2018), ‘The effect of social norms on bribe offers’, The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 34(3): 457–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andvig, J.C. and Moene, K.O. (1990), ‘How corruption may corrupt’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 13: 63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arad, A. and Rubinstein, A. (2015), The People's Perspective on Libertarian-Paternalistic Policies, Available at: http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il/papers/LP.pdf.Google Scholar
Armantier, O. and Boly, A. (2012), ‘On the external validity of laboratory experiments on corruption’, Research in Experimental Economics, 15: 117–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baez-Camargo, C. (2017), Corruption, Social Norms and Behaviours: A comparative assessment of Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, Basel, Switzerland: Basel Institute of Governance.Google Scholar
Banerjee, A. V et al. , (2011) ‘Do informed voters make better choices? Experimental evidence from urban India’, Journal of Development Studies, (nov), 46.Google Scholar
Bardhan, P. (1997), ‘Corruption and development: A review of issues’, Journal of Economic Literature, 35: 1320–1346.Google Scholar
Barr, A. and Serra, D. (2010), ‘Corruption and culture: An experimental analysis’, Journal of Public Economics, 94(11–12): 862–869.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bédécarrats, F., Guérin, I. and Roubaud, F. (2019), ‘All that Glitters is not Gold. The Political Economy of Randomized Evaluations in Development’, Development and Change, 50(3): 735–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bicchieri, C. (2016), Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms 1 edition., New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bicchieri, C. and Dimant, E. (2019), ‘Nudging with Care: The Risks and Benefits of Social Information’, Public Choice, Forthcoming..Google Scholar
Bicchieri, C., Lindemans, J.W. and Jiang, T. (2014), ‘A structured approach to a diagnostic of collective practices’, Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 1418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bicchieri, C. and Mercier, H. (2014), ‘Norms and Beliefs: How Change Occurs’, The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, 63(January 2014): 60–82.Google Scholar
Brandts, J. and Charness, G. (2011), ‘The strategy versus the direct-response method: A first survey of experimental comparisons’, Experimental Economics, 14(3): 375–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, C. et al. (2003), ‘Regulation for Conservatives: Behavioral Economics and the Case for “Asymmetric Paternalism”’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 151(3): 1211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cialdini, R.B., Reno, R.R. and Kallgren, C. (1990), ‘A focus theory of normative conduct: recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(6): 1015–1026.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cislaghi, B. and Heise, L. (2018), ‘Using social norms theory for health promotion in low-income countries’, Health Promotion International, 1–8.Google Scholar
Deaton, A. (2010), ‘Instruments, Randomization, and Learning about Development’, Journal of Economic Literature, 48(2): 424–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dimant, E. (2015), ‘On Peer Effects: Behavioral Contagion of (Un)Ethical Behavior and the Role of Social Identity’, Journal of Economic Psychology, 73: 66–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobie, K., (2017) South African Citizens’ Bribery Survey, Pretoria, South Africa.Google Scholar
Ethics Institute, (2016), South African Citizens’ Bribery Survey, 2016 (Report no. 02). Available at: https://www.tei.org.za/phocadownload/userupload/Citizens-Bribery-Survey-2016-FINAL.pdfGoogle Scholar
Ethics Institute, (2017), South African Citizens’ Bribery Survey, 2017 (Report no. 03). Available at: https://www.tei.org.za/phocadownload/CBS%202017_29%20November%202017_Upload%20to%20web.pdfGoogle Scholar
Efferson, C. and Vogt, S. (2018), ‘Behavioural homogenization with spillovers in a normative domain’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1879).Google Scholar
Fisman, R. and Golden, M. (2017a), ‘How to fight corruption’, Science, 356(6340): 803–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisman, R. and Golden, M.A. (2017b), Corruption: What everyone needs to know 1st ed., New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fjeldstad, O.-H. (2005), ‘Issue: Revenue administration and corruption’, U4 Issue 2:2005, p.24. Available at: http://www.u4.no/themes/pfm/Revenueissue/revenuefront.cfm.Google Scholar
Frey, E. and Rogers, T. (2014), ‘Persistence: How Treatment Effects Persist After Interventions Stop S. T. Fiske, ed.’, Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(1): 172–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gitau, R. (2011), ‘T.I.A.: This is Africa’. Huffington Post. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rosalia-gitau/tia-this-is-africa_b_534161.htmlGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E. (1969), Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, New York, NY, USA: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Heywood, P.M. (2018), ‘Combating corruption in the twenty-first century: New approaches’, Daedalus, 147(3): 83–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heywood, P.M. (2017), ‘Rethinking corruption: Hocus-pocus, locus and focus’, Slavonic and East European Review, 95(1): 21–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heywood, P.M. (2014), Routledge handbook of political corruption Heywood, P. M., ed., New York, NY, USA: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, L.K. and Patel, R.N. (2017), Collective Action on Corruption in Nigeria: A social norms approach to connecting society and institutions., pp.1–53. Available at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/publications/research/2017-05-17-corruption-nigeria-hoffmann-patel.pdf.Google Scholar
Jackson, D. and Köbis, N.C. (2018), Anti-corruption through a social norms lens, Bergen, Norway.Google Scholar
Jamil, T. et al. (2017), ‘Default “Gunel and Dickey” Bayes factors for contingency tables’, Behavior Research Methods, 49(2): 638–652.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jeffreys, H. (1961), Theory of probability. (3rd ed.), New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johnsøn, J., Taxell, N. and Zaum, D. (2012), Mapping evidence gaps in anti-corruption, Bergen, Norway.Google Scholar
Kerr, N.L. and Kaufman-Gilliland, C.M. (1997), ‘”.. and besides, I probably couldn't have made a difference anyway”: Justification of Social Dilemma Defection via Perceived Self-Inefficacy’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33(3): 211–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Köbis, N.C. et al. (2015), ‘“Who doesn't?” - The impact of descriptive norms on corruption’, PLoS ONE, 10(6): e0131830.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Köbis, N.C. et al. (2016), ‘Prospection in individual and interpersonal corruption dilemmas’, Review of General Psychology, 20(1): 71–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Köbis, N.C., Iragorri-Carter, D. and Starke, C. (2018), ‘A Social Psychological View on the Social Norms of Corruption’, In Kubbe, I. and Engelbert, A. (eds), Corruption and Norms – Why Informal Rules Matter, London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 31–52.Google Scholar
Köbis, N.C., et al. (2019), ‘Intuitive Honesty Versus Dishonesty: Meta-Analytic Evidence’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(5): 778–796.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Köbis, N.C., Jackson, D. and Iragorri-Carter, D. (2020), ‘Social norms and corruption – recent trends in empirical research’. In Mungiu-Pippidi, A. and Heywood, P.M., (eds), A Research Agenda for Studies of Corruption, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.Google Scholar
Koelble, T.A., (2018), ‘Caught Between Liberation and Liberalism’, In Kubbe, I. and Engelbert, A., (eds) Corruption and Norms - Why Informal Rules Matter, London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 115–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krupka, E.L. and Weber, R.A. (2013), ‘Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary?’, Journal of the European Economic Association, 11(3): 495–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kubbe, I. and Engelbert, A. eds., (2018), Corruption and Norms - Why Informal Rules Matter, Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loewenstein, G. and Chatter, N. (2017), ‘Putting nudges in perspective’, Behavioural Public Policy, 1(1): 26–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, M. (2009), ‘The effects of subjective norms on behaviour in the theory of planned behaviour: A meta-analysis’, British Journal of Social Psychology, 48(4): 649–705.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marquette, H. and Peiffer, C. (2015), Corruption and Collective Action, Bergen, Norway.Google Scholar
Mény, Y. (1996), ‘“Fin de siècle”corruption: Change, crisis and shifting values’, International Social Science Journal, 48: 309–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mortensen, C. R. et al. (2019), ‘Trending Norms: A Lever for Encouraging Behaviors Performed by the Minority’, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(2): 201–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2017), ‘The time has come for evidence-based anticorruption’, Nature Human Behaviour, 1(1): 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nye, J.S. (1967), ‘Corruption and political development: A cost-benefit analysis’, The American Political Science Review, 61(2): 417–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OECD, (2018), Behavioural Insights for Public Integrity: Harnessing the Human Factor to Counter Corruption, Paris, France: OECD.Google Scholar
Oliver, A. (2013), ‘From Nudging to Budging: Using Behavioural Economics to Inform Public Sector Policy’, Journal of Social Policy, 42(4): 685–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliver, A. (2015), ‘Nudging, shoving, and budging: Behavioural economic-informed policy’, Public Administration, 93(3): 700–714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliver, A. and Ubel, P. (2014), ‘Nudging the obese: a UK–US consideration’, Health Economics, Policy and Law, 9(3): 329–342.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olken, B.A. (2009), ‘Corruption perceptions vs. corruption reality’, Journal of Public Economics, 93(7–8): 950–964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pailey, R.N. (2013), Gbagba, New York, NY: One Moore Book.Google Scholar
Pailey, R.N. (2019), Jaadeh, New York, USA: One Moore Book.Google Scholar
Paluck, E.L. (2009), ‘What's in a Norm? Sources and Processes of Norm Change’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3): 594–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paluck, E.L., Shepherd, H. and Aronow, P.M. (2016), ‘Changing climates of conflict: A social network experiment in 56 schools’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(3): 566–571.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paprzycka, K., (1999), ‘Normative expectations, intentions and belief’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, XXXVII: 629–652.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peiffer, C. et al. , (2019), ‘The surprising case of police bribery reduction in South Africa’, Crime, Law and Social Change, pp.1–20. Available at: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10611-019-09843-8 [Accessed July 22, 2019].Google Scholar
Peiffer, C. and Walton, G. (2019), Overcoming Collective Action Problems through Anti-corruption Messages,CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkins, H.W. and Wechsler, H. (1996), ‘Variation in Perceived College Drinking Norms and its Impact on Alchohl Abuse: A Nationwide Study’, Journal of Drug Issues, 26(4): 961–974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, A., Rothstein, B. and Teorell, J. (2012), ‘Why anticorruption reforms fail–Systemic corruption as a collective action problem’, Governance, 26(3): 449–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinker, S., Nowak, M.A. and Lee, J.J. (2008), ‘The logic of indirect speech’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105: 833–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rose-Ackerman, S. (2006), International handbook on the economics of corruption Rose-Ackerman, S., ed., Cheltenham, UK/Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothstein, B. (2000), ‘Trust, Social Dilemmas and Collective Memories’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 12(4): 477–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothstein, B. (2011), ‘Anti-corruption: The indirect “big bang” approach’, Review of International Political Economy, 18: 228–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothstein, B. and Varraich, A. (2017), Making Sense of Corruption, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scharbatke-Church, C. and Chigas, D. (2016), Facilitation in the Criminal Justice System, Boston, Massachusetts. Available at: fletcher.tufts.edu/IHS.Google Scholar
Schram, A., Di Zheng, J. and Zhuravleva, T. (2019), Contagious corruption: cross-country comparisons, Florence, Italy.Google Scholar
Soraperra, I. et al. , (2019), A market for integrity An experiment on corruption in the education sector, CREED Working Paper, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starke, C., Naab, T.K. and Scherer, H. (2016), ‘Free to expose corruption: The impact of media freedom, internet access, and governmental online service delivery on corruption’, International Journal of Communication, 10: 4702–4722.Google Scholar
Stephenson, M.C. (2018), Corruption as a self-reinforcing “trap”: Implications for reform strategy, QoG Quality of Government Institute Working Paper.Google Scholar
Stibe, A. and Cugelman, B. (2016), ‘Persuasive backfiring: When behavior change interventions trigger unintended negative outcomes’, In Lecture Notes in Computer Science. pp. 65–77. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31510-2_6Google Scholar
Sunstein, C.R. (2015), ‘On Interesting Policymakers’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(6): 764–767.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tankard, M. and Paluck, E.L. (2016), ‘Norm as a Vehicle for Social Change’, Social Issues and Policy Review, 10(1): 181–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thaler, R. and Sunstein, C. (2008), Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness, Yale University Press, USA.Google Scholar
Transparency International. (2013), Global Corruption Barometer, Transparency International. Available at: https://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/reportGoogle Scholar
Transparency International. (2017), People and Corruption: Citizens voices from around the world – Global Corruption Barometer, Transparency International. Available at: https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/publication/people_and_corruption_citizens_voices_from_around_the_worldGoogle Scholar
van der Linden, S. (2018), ‘The future of behavioral insights: on the importance of socially situated nudges’, Behavioural Public Policy, 2(2): 207–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogt, S. et al. (2016), ‘Changing cultural attitudes towards female genital cutting’, Nature, 538(7626): 506–509.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Winters, M.S., Testa, P. and Fredrickson, M.M. (2012), ‘Using Field Experiments to Understand Information as an Antidote to Corruption’, In Serra, D. and Wantchekon, L., (eds), New Advances in Experimental Research on Corruption. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 213–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhao, H., Zhang, H. and Xu, Y. (2017), ‘Effects of perceived descriptive norms on corrupt intention: The mediating role of moral disengagement’, International Journal of Psychology.Google ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: File

Köbis et al. supplementary material

Köbis et al. supplementary material

Download Köbis et al. supplementary material(File)
File 1.6 MB