Tax morale and the role of social norms and reciprocity: Evidence from a randomized survey experiment

Philipp Doerrenberg and Andreas Peichl

No 17-045, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: We present the first randomized survey experiment in the context of tax compliance to assess the role of social norms and reciprocity for intrinsic tax morale. We find that participants in a reciprocity treatment have significantly higher tax morale than those in a social-norm treatment. This suggests that a potential backfire effect of social norms is outweighed if the consequences of violating the social norm are made salient. We further document the anatomy of intrinsic motivations for tax compliance and present first evidence that previously found gender effects in tax morale are not driven by differences in risk preferences.

Keywords: Tax compliance; Tax evasion; Intrinsic motivations; Tax morale; Social norms; Reciprocity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 H20 H32 H50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-iue, nep-pbe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Tax Morale and the Role of Social Norms and Reciprocity - Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment (2022)
Working Paper: Tax Morale and the Role of Social Norms and Reciprocity. Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment (2018)
Working Paper: Tax Morale and the Role of Social Norms and Reciprocity: Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment (2018)
Working Paper: Tax morale and the role of social norms and reciprocity - Evidence from a randomized survey experiment (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:17045

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