IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v52y2016icp24-37.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Power, justice, and trust: A moderated mediation analysis of tax compliance among Ethiopian business owners

Author

Listed:
  • Gobena, Lemessa Bayissa
  • Van Dijke, Marius

Abstract

We explored the moderating roles of legitimate and coercive power held by the tax authority in the relationship between procedural justice, trust in the tax authority, and voluntary tax compliance. Drawing from fairness heuristic theory and the slippery slope framework of tax compliance, we predicted that procedural justice fosters voluntary tax compliance, particularly when legitimate power of the tax authority is low and when coercive power of the authority is high. Moreover, we predicted that these interactive effects are mediated by (cognition-based) trust. Finally, we predicted that coercive power of the tax authority is positively related with enforced tax compliance. The results of a field study among Ethiopian business owners supported most predictions. This research is among the first to integrate social–psychological and deterrence-related factors to understand tax compliance behavior in a developing country.

Suggested Citation

  • Gobena, Lemessa Bayissa & Van Dijke, Marius, 2016. "Power, justice, and trust: A moderated mediation analysis of tax compliance among Ethiopian business owners," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 24-37.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:52:y:2016:i:c:p:24-37
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2015.11.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487015001397
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2015.11.004?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 search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James Alm & Erich Kirchler & Stephan Muehlbacher & Katharina Gangl & Eva Hofmann & Christoph Kogler & Maria Pollai, 2012. "Rethinking the Research Paradigms for Analysing Tax Compliance Behaviour," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 13(02), pages 33-40, July.
    2. Frey, Bruno S. & Torgler, Benno, 2007. "Tax morale and conditional cooperation," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 136-159, March.
    3. Kirchler, Erich & Wahl, Ingrid, 2010. "Tax compliance inventory TAX-I: Designing an inventory for surveys of tax compliance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 331-346, June.
    4. Lars P. Feld & Bruno S. Frey, 2002. "Trust breeds trust: How taxpayers are treated," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 87-99, July.
    5. Donna Bobek & Robin Roberts & John Sweeney, 2007. "The Social Norms of Tax Compliance: Evidence from Australia, Singapore, and the United States," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 74(1), pages 49-64, August.
    6. International Monetary Fund, 2011. "The IMF's Government Finance Statistics Yearbook: Maps of Government for 74 Countries," IMF Working Papers 2011/127, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Torgler, Benno & Schneider, Friedrich, 2007. "Shadow Economy, Tax Morale, Governance and Institutional Quality: A Panel Analysis," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt26s710z8, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    8. Torgler, Benno & Schneider, Friedrich, 2009. "The impact of tax morale and institutional quality on the shadow economy," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 228-245, April.
    9. Lars P. Feld & Jean‐Robert Tyran, 2002. "Tax Evasion and Voting: An Experimental Analysis," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 197-221, May.
    10. James Alm & Erich Kirchler & Stephan Muehlbacher, 2012. "Combining Psychology and Economics in the Analysis of Compliance: From Enforcement to Cooperation," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 133-152, September.
    11. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & Cait Lamberton & Michael I. Norton, 2014. "Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance," CEP Discussion Papers dp1270, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Kirchler, Erich & Hoelzl, Erik & Wahl, Ingrid, 2008. "Enforced versus voluntary tax compliance: The "slippery slope" framework," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 210-225, April.
    13. Wenzel, Michael, 2004. "An analysis of norm processes in tax compliance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 213-228, April.
    14. Hansjörg Blöchliger & Oliver Petzold, 2009. "Taxes and Grants: On the Revenue Mix of Sub-Central Governments," OECD Working Papers on Fiscal Federalism 7, OECD Publishing.
    15. Ng, Kok-Yee & Chua, Roy Y.J., 2006. "Do I Contribute More When I Trust More? Differential Effects of Cognition- and Affect-Based Trust," Management and Organization Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 43-66, March.
    16. Steven Van de Walle & Zoe Scott, 2011. "The Political Role of Service Delivery in State‐Building: Exploring the Relevance of European History for Developing Countries," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 29(1), pages 5-21, January.
    17. Kastlunger, Barbara & Lozza, Edoardo & Kirchler, Erich & Schabmann, Alfred, 2013. "Powerful authorities and trusting citizens: The Slippery Slope Framework and tax compliance in Italy," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 36-45.
    18. James Alm & Chandler McClellan, 2012. "Tax Morale and Tax Compliance from the Firm's Perspective," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(1), pages 1-17, February.
    19. Bahl, Roy W. & Bird, Richard M., 2008. "Tax Policy in Developing Countries: Looking Back—and Forward," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 61(2), pages 279-301, June.
    20. Brautigam,Deborah & Fjeldstad,Odd-Helge & Moore,Mick (ed.), 2008. "Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521888158.
    21. Bordignon, Massimo, 1993. "A fairness approach to income tax evasion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 345-362, October.
    22. James Andreoni & Brian Erard & Jonathan Feinstein, 1998. "Tax Compliance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(2), pages 818-860, June.
    23. Benno Torgler, 2003. "Tax Morale in Transition Countries," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 357-381.
    24. Waud, Roger N, 1986. "Tax Aversion and the Laffer Curve," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 33(3), pages 213-227, August.
    25. Johnson, Devon & Grayson, Kent, 2005. "Cognitive and affective trust in service relationships," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 500-507, April.
    26. van Dijke, Marius & Verboon, Peter, 2010. "Trust in authorities as a boundary condition to procedural fairness effects on tax compliance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 80-91, February.
    27. Benno Torgler, 2003. "Beyond Punishment: a tax compliance experiment with taxpayers in Costa Rica," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 18(1), pages 27-56, June.
    28. Kirchler,Erich, 2007. "The Economic Psychology of Tax Behaviour," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521876742.
    29. Stephan Muehlbacher & Erich Kirchler & Herbert Schwarzenberger, 2011. "Voluntary versus enforced tax compliance: empirical evidence for the “slippery slope” framework," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 89-97, August.
    30. Allingham, Michael G. & Sandmo, Agnar, 1972. "Income tax evasion: a theoretical analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3-4), pages 323-338, November.
    31. Kok-Yee Ng & Roy Y. J. Chua, 2006. "Do I Contribute More When I Trust More? Differential Effects of Cognition- and Affect-Based Trust," Management and Organization Review, International Association of Chinese Management Research, vol. 2(1), pages 43-66, March.
    32. Feld, Lars P & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2002. "Tax Evasion and Voting: An Experimental Analysis," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 197-222.
    33. Kogler, Christoph & Batrancea, Larissa & Nichita, Anca & Pantya, Jozsef & Belianin, Alexis & Kirchler, Erich, 2013. "Trust and power as determinants of tax compliance: Testing the assumptions of the slippery slope framework in Austria, Hungary, Romania and Russia," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 169-180.
    34. Brautigam,Deborah & Fjeldstad,Odd-Helge & Moore,Mick (ed.), 2008. "Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521716192.
    35. Torgler, Benno, 2011. "Tax morale and compliance : review of evidence and case studies for Europe," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5922, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Siglé, Maarten & Goslinga, Sjoerd & Speklé, Roland & van der Hel, Lisette & Veldhuizen, Robbert, 2018. "Corporate tax compliance: Is a change towards trust-based tax strategies justified?," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 3-16.
    2. Georgia Kaplanoglou & Vassilis T. Rapanos & Nikolaos Daskalakis, 2016. "Tax compliance behaviour during the crisis: the case of Greek SMEs," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 405-444, December.
    3. Maria Kostritsa & Inken Sittler, 2017. "The Impact of Social Norms, Trust, and Fairness on Voluntary Tax Compliance in Austria," Management, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 12(4), pages 333-353.
    4. Jonathan Farrar & Steven E. Kaplan & Linda Thorne, 2019. "The Effect of Interactional Fairness and Detection on Taxpayers’ Compliance Intentions," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 167-180, January.
    5. Aktaş Güzel, Sonnur & Özer, Gökhan & Özcan, Murat, 2019. "The effect of the variables of tax justice perception and trust in government on tax compliance: The case of Turkey," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 80-86.
    6. Vanina Adoriana Trifan & Silviu Gabriel Szentesi & Lavinia Denisia Cuc & Mioara Florina Pantea, 2023. "Assessing Tax Compliance Behavior Among Romanian Taxpayers: An Empirical Case Study," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(3), pages 21582440231, September.
    7. YoungRok Kim & Hongyu Wan, 2022. "The effect of fairness on tax morale in South Korea: a framed question approach," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 69(1), pages 103-123, March.
    8. Siglé, Maarten A. & Goslinga, Sjoerd & Speklé, Roland F. & van der Hel, Lisette E.C.J.M., 2022. "The cooperative approach to corporate tax compliance: An empirical assessment," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    9. Frecknall-Hughes, Jane & Gangl, Katharina & Hofmann, Eva & Hartl, Barbara & Kirchler, Erich, 2023. "The influence of tax authorities on the employment of tax practitioners: Empirical evidence from a survey and interview study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    10. Gobena, Lemessa Bayissa & Van Dijke, Marius, 2017. "Fear and caring: Procedural justice, trust, and collective identification as antecedents of voluntary tax compliance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1-16.
    11. Mardhiah Mardhiah & Riyana Miranti & Robert Tanton, 2019. "The Slippery Slope Framework: Extending the Analysis by Investigating Factors Affecting Trust and Power," CESifo Working Paper Series 7494, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pickhardt, Michael & Prinz, Aloys, 2014. "Behavioral dynamics of tax evasion – A survey," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 1-19.
    2. James Alm, 2019. "What Motivates Tax Compliance?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 353-388, April.
    3. Colin C. Williams & Friedrich Schneider, 2016. "Measuring the Global Shadow Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 16551.
    4. Christoph Kogler & Stephan Muehlbacher & Erich Kirchler, 2015. "Testing the “slippery slope framework” among self-employed taxpayers," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 125-142, May.
    5. Colin C. Williams, 2014. "Confronting the Shadow Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15370.
    6. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2011. "Tax Morale, Tax Evasion and the Shadow Economy," Chapters, in: Friedrich Schneider (ed.), Handbook on the Shadow Economy, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Colin C Williams & Ioana A Horodnic, 2017. "Evaluating the policy approaches for tackling undeclared work in the European Union," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(5), pages 916-936, August.
    8. Aktaş Güzel, Sonnur & Özer, Gökhan & Özcan, Murat, 2019. "The effect of the variables of tax justice perception and trust in government on tax compliance: The case of Turkey," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 80-86.
    9. Benno Torgler, 2021. "The Power of Public Choice in Law and Economics," CREMA Working Paper Series 2021-04, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    10. Gaetano Lisi, 2019. "Slippery slope framework, tax morale and tax compliance: a theoretical integration and an empirical assessment," Discussion Papers in Economic Behaviour 0219, University of Valencia, ERI-CES.
    11. Batrancea, Larissa & Nichita, Anca & Olsen, Jerome & Kogler, Christoph & Kirchler, Erich & Hoelzl, Erik & Weiss, Avi & Torgler, Benno & Fooken, Jonas & Fuller, Joanne & Schaffner, Markus & Banuri, She, 2019. "Trust and power as determinants of tax compliance across 44 nations," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    12. Mendoza, Juan P. & Wielhouwer, Jacco L. & Kirchler, Erich, 2017. "The backfiring effect of auditing on tax compliance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 284-294.
    13. Kogler, Christoph & Batrancea, Larissa & Nichita, Anca & Pantya, Jozsef & Belianin, Alexis & Kirchler, Erich, 2013. "Trust and power as determinants of tax compliance: Testing the assumptions of the slippery slope framework in Austria, Hungary, Romania and Russia," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 169-180.
    14. Maria Kostritsa & Inken Sittler, 2017. "The Impact of Social Norms, Trust, and Fairness on Voluntary Tax Compliance in Austria," Management, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 12(4), pages 333-353.
    15. Torgler, Benno, 2011. "Tax morale and compliance : review of evidence and case studies for Europe," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5922, The World Bank.
    16. Georgia Kaplanoglou & Vassilis T. Rapanos & Nikolaos Daskalakis, 2016. "Tax compliance behaviour during the crisis: the case of Greek SMEs," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 405-444, December.
    17. Colin C Williams & Junhong Yang, 2017. "Tackling falsely-declared salaries in Bulgaria: evidence from a 2015 survey," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 3, pages 333-351, September.
    18. Fábio Pereira Silva & Reinaldo Guerreiro & Eduardo Flores, 2019. "Voluntary versus enforced tax compliance: the slippery slope framework in the Brazilian context," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 66(2), pages 147-180, June.
    19. C Williams, Colin, 2021. "Explaining And Tackling Undeclared Work In South East Europe: Lessons From A 2019 Eurobarometer Survey," UTMS Journal of Economics, University of Tourism and Management, Skopje, Macedonia, vol. 12(1), pages 1-18.
    20. Kaplanoglou, Georgia & Rapanos, Vassilis T., 2015. "Why do people evade taxes? New experimental evidence from Greece," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 21-32.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Procedural justice; Trust; Legitimate power; Coercive power; Voluntary tax compliance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

    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:eee:joepsy:v:52:y:2016:i:c:p:24-37. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    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.