Monetary incentives and the contagion of unethical behavior

Benoît Le Maux (), David Masclet () and Sarah Necker ()
Additional contact information
Benoît Le Maux: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
David Masclet: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CIRANO - Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en analyse des organisations - UQAM - Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal
Sarah Necker: FAU - Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg = University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We examine how monetary incentives and information about others' dishonesty affect lying decisions and whether these two dimensions interact with each other. Our experiment consists of a repeated cheating game where we vary the monetary incentives (Low, High, and Very High) and information about others' dishonesty (With or Without information). We find that dishonesty decreases when payoffs are Very High. Information has only a weak positive effect on average. Conditioning on beliefs, we find that those who overestimate (underestimate) cheating reduce (increase) dishonesty. Information and payoffs do not interact with each other.

Keywords: Laboratory experiment; Cheating; Monetary incentives; Information; Lying cost; C91; D03; D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07-22
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04700382v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2024, ⟨10.1007/s40881-024-00175-5⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:hal-04700382

DOI: 10.1007/s40881-024-00175-5

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().