Arbeitspapier

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

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.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: ifo Working Paper ; No. 242

Classification
Wirtschaft
Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue: General
Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: Firm
National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: General
Field Experiments
Subject
Tax compliance
tax evasion
instrinsic motivation
tax morale
social norms
reciprocity

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Doerrenberg, Philipp
Peichl, Andreas
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich
(where)
Munich
(when)
2017

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Doerrenberg, Philipp
  • Peichl, Andreas
  • ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich

Time of origin

  • 2017

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