“…Second, we examine the vicarious-punishment theory under specific conditions (Yiu et al, 2014, 2018), and extend the defection against alliance partners’ misbehavior to a more specific reaction (Lee & Zhong, 2020a), namely the peer-hinting effect. Third, we not only verify the effectiveness of the fraud triangle theory and trust triangle theory in developing countries (Cao & Zhang, 2021; Gu, Hasan, & Lu, 2022), but also explain how their pillars possibly interact. Fourth, we contribute to the social network literature by investigating how closely connected social network subgroups, namely communities, react to fraud and punishment (Bao et al, 2019).…”