Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/228485 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Games and Economic Behavior [ISSN:] 1090-2473 [Volume:] 124 [Publisher:] Elsevier [Place:] Amsterdam [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 569-578
Publisher: 
Elsevier, Amsterdam
Abstract: 
Cheating such as corruption and tax evasion is prevalent in the developing world; therefore, many interventions have been undertaken to reduce cheating in developing countries. Although some field evidence shows that poverty is correlated with cheating, the causal effect of poverty on cheating in the field and the effectiveness of interventions for financially constrained people remain an open question. We present results from a lab-in-the-field experiment with low-income rice farmers in Thailand (N = 568), in which we, first, investigate the causal effect of poverty on cheating and, second, test whether poverty affects the effectiveness of a social-norm intervention to reduce cheating. We show poverty itself does not affect willingness to cheat. However, although a social-norm-reminder intervention reduced cheating when the population was richer (after harvest), it had no effect when the population was poorer (before harvest). Our results suggest that the timing of interventions to change behavior might matter.
Subjects: 
cheating
lying
poverty
social norms
interventions
lab-in-the-field experiment
JEL: 
C91
C93
D82
D91
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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