Fear and caring: Procedural justice, trust, and collective identification as antecedents of voluntary tax compliance

Lemessa Bayissa Gobena and Marius Van Dijke

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2017, vol. 62, issue C, 1-16

Abstract: We investigated the interactive roles of procedural justice of the tax authority, trust in the tax authority, and identification with the nation in predicting voluntary tax compliance. Drawing from fairness heuristic theory and relational models of justice, we predicted that the relationship between procedural justice and voluntary tax compliance that has been found particularly among citizens with low (vs. high) trust in the tax authorities is restricted to citizens who weakly (vs. strongly) identify with the nation. The results of a field study with samples of Ethiopian and US taxpayers as respondents largely support our predictions. This research integrates the role of important and well-studied social psychological factors that shape voluntary tax compliance and reveals support for the hypothesis in a developing (i.e., Ethiopia) and a developed (i.e., US) nation – nations with strongly divergent tax climates.

Keywords: Procedural justice; Cognition-based trust; Identification with the nation; Voluntary tax compliance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:62:y:2017:i:c:p:1-16

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2017.05.005

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