IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v194y2025ics0305750x25001366.html

Do government accountability and responsiveness enhance support for property taxes? Experimental evidence from China

Author

Listed:
  • Lü, Xiaobo
  • Tsai, Lily L.
  • Zhang, Ping
  • Trinh, Minh

Abstract

The adoption of property taxes is often met with significant challenges in developing countries. Enhancing administrative capacity for assessment and compliance is undoubtedly important, but addressing the political impasse caused by potential mass resentment poses a more formidable challenge. We explore whether institutions for responsiveness and accountability enhance tax morale in societies with weak democratic institutions. We investigate two dimensions of good governance that the government can uphold: government responsiveness to citizen demands in policymaking; and holding corrupt officials accountable. To assess their impact on property tax preferences and compliance behaviors in urban China, we conducted a conjoint experiment and a lab-in-the-field experiment. The former reveals that both responsiveness and accountability have positive effects on preferences for property tax policies; however, the results of the latter provide strong evidence that top-down institutions of accountability are more influential in shaping tax compliance behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Lü, Xiaobo & Tsai, Lily L. & Zhang, Ping & Trinh, Minh, 2025. "Do government accountability and responsiveness enhance support for property taxes? Experimental evidence from China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:194:y:2025:i:c:s0305750x25001366
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107051
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X25001366
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107051?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mr. John Norregaard, 2013. "Taxing Immovable Property Revenue Potential and Implementation Challenges," IMF Working Papers 2013/129, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Kao, Jay C. & Lü, Xiaobo & Queralt, Didac, 2024. "Do gains in political representation sweeten tax reform in China? It depends on who you ask," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 146-165, January.
    3. Jidong Chen & Jennifer Pan & Yiqing Xu, 2016. "Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(2), pages 383-400, April.
    4. Timmons, Jeffrey F. & Garfias, Francisco, 2015. "Revealed Corruption, Taxation, and Fiscal Accountability: Evidence from Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 13-27.
    5. repec:idq:ictduk:13655 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Weigel, Jonathan, 2020. "The participation dividend of taxation: how citizens in Congo engage more with the state when it tries to tax them," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104561, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Joel Slemrod, 2019. "Tax Compliance and Enforcement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(4), pages 904-954, December.
    8. Paler, Laura, 2013. "Keeping the Public Purse: An Experiment in Windfalls, Taxes, and the Incentives to Restrain Government," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 107(4), pages 706-725, November.
    9. 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.
    10. Robert H. Bates & Da-Hsiang Donald Lien, 1985. "A Note on Taxation, Development, and Representative Government," Politics & Society, , vol. 14(1), pages 53-70, March.
    11. Margaret Levi & Audrey Sacks, 2009. "Legitimating beliefs: Sources and indicators," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(4), pages 311-333, December.
    12. Cheng, Hua & Chen, Xiaowei & Qi, Shusen, 2023. "Asymmetric corporate tax compliance: Evidence from a tax reform in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    13. Cohen-Charash, Yochi & Spector, Paul E., 2001. "The Role of Justice in Organizations: A Meta-Analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 278-321, November.
    14. Antinyan, Armenak & Asatryan, Zareh & Dai, Zhixin & Wang, Kezhi, 2021. "Does the frequency of reminders matter for their effectiveness? A randomized controlled trial," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 752-764.
    15. Benjamin A. Olken, 2007. "Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(2), pages 200-249.
    16. Kristina Murphy & Tom R. Tyler & Amy Curtis, 2009. "Nurturing regulatory compliance: Is procedural justice effective when people question the legitimacy of the law?," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(1), pages 1-26, March.
    17. Ali, Merima & Fjeldstad, Odd-Helge & Sjursen, Ingrid Hoem, 2014. "To Pay or Not to Pay? Citizens’ Attitudes Toward Taxation in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 828-842.
    18. Cao, Jing & Hu, Wenhao, 2016. "A microsimulation of property tax policy in China," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 128-142.
    19. Hainmueller, Jens & Hopkins, Daniel J. & Yamamoto, Teppei, 2014. "Causal Inference in Conjoint Analysis: Understanding Multidimensional Choices via Stated Preference Experiments," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 1-30, January.
    20. North, Douglass C. & Weingast, Barry R., 1989. "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 803-832, December.
    21. Cui,Wei, 2022. "The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108491426.
    22. Speer, Johanna, 2012. "Participatory Governance Reform: A Good Strategy for Increasing Government Responsiveness and Improving Public Services?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(12), pages 2379-2398.
    23. Nicholas R. Lardy, 2019. "The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China?," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 7373, October.
    24. Jonathan L Weigel, 2020. "The Participation Dividend of Taxation: How Citizens in Congo Engage More with the State When it Tries to Tax Them," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 1849-1903.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Jonathan L. Weigel & Elie Kabue Ngindu, 2023. "The taxman cometh: Pathways out of a low‐capacity trap in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(360), pages 1362-1396, October.
    2. Kevin Grieco & Abou Bakarr Kamara & Niccolo F. Meriggi & Julian Michel & Prichard Wilson, 2025. "Participation, legitimacy and fiscal capacity in weak states: Evidence from participatory budgeting," CSAE Working Paper Series 2025-05, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    3. Weigel, Jonathan, 2020. "The participation dividend of taxation: how citizens in Congo engage more with the state when it tries to tax them," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104561, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Krakowski, Krzysztof & Ronconi, Lucas, 2025. "Compliance and accountability-seeking: Evidence from a field experiment in Argentina," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    5. Prichard, Wilson & Jibao, Samuel & Orgeira Pillai, Nicolas, 2025. "Sub-national property tax reform and tax bargaining: Lessons from a quasi-randomized reform program in Sierra Leone," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    6. Banerjee, Ritwik & Boly, Amadou & Gillanders, Robert, 2022. "Anti-tax evasion, anti-corruption and public good provision: An experimental analysis of policy spillovers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 179-194.
    7. López García, Ana Isabel & Berens, Sarah, 2025. "Taxing the wealthy in Haiti: Evidence from a conjoint experiment on property tax preferences," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    8. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Fjeldstad, Odd-Helge & Mmari, Donald & Sjursen, Ingrid Hoem & Tungodden, Bertil, 2021. "Understanding the resource curse: A large-scale experiment on corruption in Tanzania," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 129-157.
    9. Deparade, Darius & Jarmolinski, Lennart & Mohr, Peter, 2025. "Behavioral interventions, tax compliance and consequences on inequality," Discussion Papers 2025/4, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    10. Lucie Gadenne, 2017. "Tax Me, but Spend Wisely? Sources of Public Finance and Government Accountability," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 274-314, January.
    11. Tourek, Gabriel, 2022. "Targeting in tax behavior: Evidence from Rwandan firms," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    12. Cohen, Isabelle, 2024. "Technology and the state: Building capacity to tax via text," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    13. repec:idq:ictduk:8967 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Antinyan, Armenak & Asatryan, Zareh, 2019. "Nudging for tax compliance: A meta-analysis," ZEW Discussion Papers 19-055, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    15. Esteban Muñoz-Sobrado & Amedeo Piolatto & Antoine Zerbini & Federica Braccioli, 2024. "The taxing challenges of the state: Unveiling the role of fiscal & administrative capacity in development," Working Papers 2024/05, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    16. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Samuel D. Restrepo-Oyola, 2025. "A randomized intervention to gauge preferred tax rates and progressivity," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 32(3), pages 782-804, June.
    17. Manuel Fernández & Marco Gonzalez-Navarro & Climent Quintana-Domeque, 2025. "Local Public Goods and Property Tax Compliance: Experimental Evidence from Street Pavement," Documentos CEDE 2025-27, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    18. Lorko, Matej & Miklánek, Tomáš & Servátka, Maroš, 2025. "Why do some nudges work and others not?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    19. Timmons, Jeffrey F. & Garfias, Francisco, 2015. "Revealed Corruption, Taxation, and Fiscal Accountability: Evidence from Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 13-27.
    20. Cockx, Lara & Francken, Nathalie, 2016. "Natural resources: A curse on education spending?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 394-408.
    21. Pablo Balán & Augustin Bergeron & Gabriel Tourek & Jonathan L. Weigel, 2022. "Local Elites as State Capacity: How City Chiefs Use Local Information to Increase Tax Compliance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(3), pages 762-797, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:wdevel:v:194:y:2025:i:c:s0305750x25001366. 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/worlddev .

    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.