Testing local descriptive norms and salience of enforcement action: A field experiment to increase tax collection

Christopher Larkin, Michael Sanders, Isabelle Andresen and Felicity Algate
Additional contact information
Christopher Larkin: Behavioural Insights Team
Michael Sanders: What Works Centre for Children¡¦s Social Care & King¡¦s College London
Isabelle Andresen: Behavioural Insights Team
Felicity Algate: Behavioural Insights Team

Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 2019, vol. 2, issue 1

Abstract: The use of behavioral science interventions, and particularly social norms, in tax compliance is a growing industry for scholars and practitioners alike in recent years. However, the causal mechanism of these interventions is unknown, where effects could be explained by a pro-social desire to support one¡¦s community, conditional cooperation, desire to conform, or fear of reprisals. We conduct a field experiment in local government taxation in the United Kingdom which tests the effectiveness of a social (descriptive) norm against a control condition and against messages that highlight the enforcement process. The social norm outperforms enforcement salience, suggesting that this explanation, although more powerful than the control, does not fully explain compliance effects. This study further provides evidence that social norm type interventions can be effective at the subnational level, a context where previous work has shown they may produce null effects.

Keywords: Taxation; Social norms; Reference groups; Subnational; Randomized controlled trial (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 D91 H20 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journal-bpa.org/index.php/jbpa/article/download/54/38 (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:bpd:articl:v:2:y:2019:i:1:jbpa.21.54

DOI: 10.30636/jbpa.21.54

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Behavioral Public Administration from Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sebastian Jilke ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).