Abstract
Economic motives are not the only reasons for committing a (small) crime. People consider social norms and perceptions of fairness before judging a situation and acting upon it. If someone takes a bundle of printing paper from the office for private use at home, then a colleague who sees this can take action by talking to the offender or someone else (peer reporting). We investigate how fairness perception influences the decision to act upon incorrect behavior or not.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 289-310 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Economist (Netherlands) |
Volume | 160 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Sept 2012 |
Funding
Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Alexander Danzer, Marcel Das, Olivier Marie, Ben Vollaard, Joachim Winter, participants of the Empirical Economics Workshop at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and the referee and editor of De Economist for constructive comments. Douhou acknowledges financial support from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) through the Mosaic program.
Keywords
- Employee theft
- Fairness
- Peer reporting
- Perception
- Social norms
- Victimization