EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Behavioural Responses to Unfair Institutions: Experimental Evidence on Rule Compliance, Norm Polarisation, and Trust

Simon Columbus, Lars Feld, Matthias Kasper and Matthew Rablen

No 10591, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This study investigates the effects of unfair enforcement of institutional rules on public good contributions, personal and social norms, and trust. In a preregistered online experiment (n = 1,038), we find that biased institutions reduce rule compliance compared to fair institutions. However, rule enforcement – fair and unfair – reduces norm polarisation compared to no enforcement. We also find that social heterogeneity lowers average trust and induces ingroup favouritism in trust. Finally, we find consistent evidence of peer effects: higher levels of peer compliance raise future compliance and spillover positively into norms and trust. Our study contributes to the literature on behavioural responses to institutional design and strengthens the case for unbiased rule enforcement.

Keywords: public goods; compliance; social norms; trust; audits; biased rule enforcement; polarisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 C92 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10591.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Behavioural Responses to Unfair Institutions: Experimental Evidence on Rule Compliance, Norm Polarisation, and Trust (2023) Downloads
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:ces:ceswps:_10591

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().

 
Page updated 2025-01-30
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10591