Cheating in the Lab Predicts Fraud in the Field. An Experiment in Public Transportations

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Cheating in the Lab Predicts Fraud in the Field: An Experiment in Public TransportationsIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We conduct an artefactual field experiment using a diversified sample of passengers of public transportations to study attitudes towards dishonesty. We find that the diversity of behavior in terms of dis/honesty in laboratory tasks and in the field correlate. Moreover, individuals who have just been fined in the field behave more honestly in the lab than the other fare-dodgers, except when context is introduced. Overall, we show that simple tests of dishonesty in the lab can predict moral firmness in life, although frauders who care about social image cheat less when behavior can be verified ex post by the experimenter.JEL Classification: B41, C91, C93, K42

Intuitive Honesty Versus Dishonesty: Meta-Analytic Evidence

“…For one, recent empirical evidence underlines the external validity of lying in economic games as a proxy for real-life dishonesty. Lying in a controlled laboratory context correlates with a variety of ethical rule breaking outside the lab, ranging from academic fraud (Cohn & Maréchal, 2017) and fare dodging (Dai, Galeotti, & Villeval, 2017) to deceptive market practices (Kröll & Rustagi, 2016). People frequently encounter such situations in daily life, often deciding quickly without much thought.…”

Students Cheat More: Comparing the Dishonesty of a Student Sample and a Representative Sample in the Laboratory*

“…There are no previous behavioral economic studies addressing specifically the age effect among adults. A few studies on dishonesty among adults control for age and find a non-significant effect (Abeler et al, 2014;Dai et al, 2017), yet the effect of age might very easily be mixed with the effect of other control/explanatory variables (Richardson and Sawyer, 2001). In the absence of dishonesty studies with a direct focus on age effects, evidence from the large and cognate body of literature on tax evasion can help shape the expectation for this study.…”

The Efficiency of Crackdowns: A Lab-in-The-Field Experiment in Public Transportations

“…The final part was a socio-demographic questionnaire which was administered to the subjects at the end of the experiment. A detailed description of the second and third parts, together with their main results, are reported in a companion paper (Dai et al, 2015b). No feedback or information about future tasks was given to subjects in parts 1-3.…”