Abstract:
Punishment is commonly believed to deter bribery. Yet, in transnational contexts with fragmented enforcement responsibility across countries, punishment effectiveness depends on public perceptions about the enforcing countries. We bridge behavioral experimentation and computational social science by combining an incentivized behavioral experiment across 20 countries (N = 4,081; 81,620 decisions) alongside a large-scale media sentiment analysis spanning 16 years. Participants' expectations about corruption and punishment in different countries predicted bribery behavior. These expectations aligned with media narratives portraying countries as more or less corrupt, revealing a close relationship between media discourse and bribery decisions. These findings suggest that anti-corruption efforts must address not only legal frameworks but also information environments influencing public perceptions, highlighting the complex interplay between enforcement credibility and media discourse in transnational bribery.
