Guilt aversion and peer effects in crime: experimental and empirical evidence from Bangladesh

Masahiro Shoji

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: I conducted an artefactual field experiment to identify whether guilt reduces crime, and how the crime reduction effects of guilt change due to peer effects. Guilt aversion predicts the occurrence of peer effects caused by changes in guilt sensitivity and belief. I found supporting evidence of changes in belief. My experiment is novel in that it develops an approach to elicit guilt sensitivity. Using this data, I show behavioural patterns consistent with guilt aversion but not with pure altruism or trustworthiness. The external validity of guilt sensitivity is also shown.

Keywords: Guilt aversion; crime; experiment; external validity; peer effects; broken windows theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D63 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-03-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-law, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/44746/1/MPRA_paper_44746.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:44746

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().