IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/comaot/v16y2010i1d10.1007_s10588-009-9061-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does ignorance promote norm compliance?

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Groeber

    (ETH Zurich)

  • Heiko Rauhut

    (ETH Zurich)

Abstract

A large extent of undetected norm violations may have positive effects for society. If many norm violations are hidden, society seems to be in good order so that actors are more willing to comply with the norms themselves. In this sense, ignorance promotes norm compliance. We challenge this view by arguing that in scenarios, in which norms are controlled and enforced by third parties who receive rewards for their success, the opposite is true: Ignorance promotes norm violations. The reason is that unsuspicious inspectors who believe that little hidden norm violations are committed will spend less effort for detection, some formerly detected norm violations will go undetected, norm targets will be less deterred from the lower detection probability and will commit more norm violations over time. This article develops a respective mathematical model and confirms the above described intuition.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Groeber & Heiko Rauhut, 2010. "Does ignorance promote norm compliance?," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 1-28, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:comaot:v:16:y:2010:i:1:d:10.1007_s10588-009-9061-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s10588-009-9061-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10588-009-9061-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10588-009-9061-7?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. Bicchieri, Cristina & Fukui, Yoshitaka, 1999. "The Great Illusion: Ignorance, Informational Cascades, and the Persistence of Unpopular Norms," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 127-155, January.
    2. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    3. Bendor, Jonathan & Mookherjee, Dilip, 1987. "Institutional Structure and the Logic of Ongoing Collective Action," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 129-154, March.
    4. Elffers, Henk & Weigel, Russell H. & Hessing, Dick J., 1987. "The consequences of different strategies for measuring tax evasion behavior," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 311-337, September.
    5. George Tsebelis, 1990. "Penalty has no Impact on Crime:," Rationality and Society, , vol. 2(3), pages 255-286, July.
    6. James Andreoni & Brian Erard & Jonathan Feinstein, 1998. "Tax Compliance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(2), pages 818-860, June.
    7. Tsebelis, George, 1989. "The Abuse of Probability in Political Analysis: The Robinson Crusoe Fallacy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(1), pages 77-91, March.
    8. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    9. Heiko Rauhut & Marcel Junker, 2009. "Punishment Deters Crime Because Humans Are Bounded in Their Strategic Decision-Making," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 12(3), pages 1-1.
    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. Andreas Diekmann & Wojtek Przepiorka & Heiko Rauhut, 2015. "Lifting the veil of ignorance: An experiment on the contagiousness of norm violations," Rationality and Society, , vol. 27(3), pages 309-333, August.
    2. Pavlin Mavrodiev & Claudio J. Tessone & Frank Schweitzer, "undated". "Quantifying the effects of social influence," Working Papers ETH-RC-13-001, ETH Zurich, Chair of Systems Design.
    3. Heiko Rauhut, 2015. "Stronger inspection incentives, less crime? Further experimental evidence on inspection games," Rationality and Society, , vol. 27(4), pages 414-454, November.
    4. Heiko Rauhut, 2013. "Beliefs about Lying and Spreading of Dishonesty: Undetected Lies and Their Constructive and Destructive Social Dynamics in Dice Experiments," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(11), pages 1-8, November.

    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. Heiko Rauhut, 2015. "Stronger inspection incentives, less crime? Further experimental evidence on inspection games," Rationality and Society, , vol. 27(4), pages 414-454, November.
    2. Christine Horne & Heiko Rauhut, 2013. "Using laboratory experiments to study law and crime," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 1639-1655, April.
    3. Dunia López-Pintado & Duncan J. Watts, 2008. "Social Influence, Binary Decisions and Collective Dynamics," Rationality and Society, , vol. 20(4), pages 399-443, November.
    4. Christine Horne & Heiko Rauhut, "undated". "Using Laboratory Experiments to Study Law and Crime," Working Papers CCSS-10-010, ETH Zurich, Chair of Systems Design.
    5. Klarita Gërxhani & Jeroen Bruggeman, 2015. "Time Lag and Communication in Changing Unpopular Norms," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-17, April.
    6. Gu, Chen & Guo, Xu & Zhang, Chengping, 2022. "Analyst target price revisions and institutional herding," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    7. Ruomeng Cui & Dennis J. Zhang & Achal Bassamboo, 2019. "Learning from Inventory Availability Information: Evidence from Field Experiments on Amazon," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 1216-1235, March.
    8. Jonas Hedlund & Carlos Oyarzun, 2018. "Imitation in heterogeneous populations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(4), pages 937-973, June.
    9. Cao, Melanie & Shi, Shouyong, 2006. "Signaling in the Internet craze of initial public offerings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 818-833, September.
    10. Wei He & Qian Wang, 2020. "The peer effect of corporate financial decisions around split share structure reform in China," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(3), pages 474-493, July.
    11. Kraemer, Carlo & Noth, Markus & Weber, Martin, 2006. "Information aggregation with costly information and random ordering: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 423-432, March.
    12. Jack Hirshleifer & Eric Rasmusen, 1992. "Are Equilibrium Strategies Unaffected by Incentives?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(3), pages 353-367, July.
    13. Fishman, Arthur & Fishman, Ram & Gneezy, Uri, 2019. "A tale of two food stands: Observational learning in the field," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 101-108.
    14. Jacob K. Goeree & Leeat Yariv, 2015. "Conformity in the lab," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 15-28, July.
    15. Buechel, Berno & Hellmann, Tim & Klößner, Stefan, 2015. "Opinion dynamics and wisdom under conformity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 240-257.
    16. Boğaçhan Çelen & Kyle Hyndman, 2012. "An experiment of social learning with endogenous timing," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 16(2), pages 251-268, September.
    17. Bohl, Martin T. & Branger, Nicole & Trede, Mark, 2017. "The case for herding is stronger than you think," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 30-40.
    18. Ennis, Huberto M. & Keister, Todd, 2005. "Government policy and the probability of coordination failures," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 939-973, May.
    19. D'Arcangelis, Anna Maria & Rotundo, Giulia, 2021. "Herding in mutual funds: A complex network approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 679-686.
    20. SHIMAMOTO Daichi & Yu Ri KIM & TODO Yasuyuki, 2019. "The Effect of Social Interactions on Exporting Activities: Evidence from Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises in rural Vietnam," Discussion papers 19020, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).

    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:spr:comaot:v:16:y:2010:i:1:d:10.1007_s10588-009-9061-7. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.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.