IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejeap/v19y2019i3p25n5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Psychometric Investigation of the Personality Traits Underlying Individual Tax Morale

Author

Listed:
  • Jacquemet Nicolas

    (Paris School of Economics and University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. CES, 106 Bd. de l’hôpital, 75013Paris, France)

  • Luchini Stéphane

    (Aix-Marseille University (Aix-Marseille School of Economics), CNRS and EHESS. Centre de la Vieille Charitée, 2 Rue de la Charité, 13236Marseille, France)

  • Malézieux Antoine

    (Tax Administration Research Centre, University of Exeter, Streatham Court, Rennes Drive, ExeterEX4 4STUK)

  • Shogren Jason F.

    (Department of Economics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071-3985, USA)

Abstract

Why do people pay taxes? Rational choice theory has fallen short in answering this question. Another explanation, called “tax morale”, has been promoted. Tax morale captures the behavioral idea that non-monetary preferences (like norm-submission, moral emotions and moral judgments) might be better determinants of tax compliance than monetary trade-offs. Herein we report on two lab experiments designed to assess whether norm-submission, moral emotions (e.g. affective empathy, cognitive empathy, propensity to feel guilt and shame) or moral judgments (e.g. ethics principles, integrity, and moralization of everyday life) can help explain compliance behavior. Although we find statistically significant correlations of tax compliance behavior with empathy and shame, the economic significance of these correlations are low–—more than 80% of the variability in compliance remains unexplained. These results suggest that tax authorities should focus on the institutional context, rather than individual preference characteristics, to handle tax evasion.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacquemet Nicolas & Luchini Stéphane & Malézieux Antoine & Shogren Jason F., 2019. "A Psychometric Investigation of the Personality Traits Underlying Individual Tax Morale," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 19(3), pages 1-25, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:19:y:2019:i:3:p:25:n:5
    DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2018-0149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2018-0149
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bejeap-2018-0149?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jacquemet, N. & Luchini, S. & Malézieux, A. & Shogren, J.F., 2020. "Who’ll stop lying under oath? Empirical evidence from tax evasion games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    2. James Alm & Antoine Malézieux, 2021. "40 years of tax evasion games: a meta-analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(3), pages 699-750, September.
    3. Emmanuelle Deglaire & Peter Daly & Fabrice Lec, 2021. "Exposure to tax dilemmas deteriorate individuals' self-declared tax morale," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 363-397, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    tax evasion; tax morale; morality; personality traits; psychometrics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:19:y:2019:i:3:p:25:n:5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.