The influence of prescriptive norms and negative externalities on bribery decisions in the lab

In most bribery games in the literature, there is no mention of rights and duties associated to participants’ roles. Authors have hitherto relied on loaded frames, negative externalities, and the possibility of sanctions to implicitly signal prescriptive norms. We argue that participants’ interpretation of these factors may not be univocal. In this study, a participant in the role of a common citizen either did or did not acquire the right to obtain a monetary benefit and could offer a bribe to an associated participant in the role of public official. This participant, in turn, had an explicit duty of providing the benefit only if the citizen acquired the right to it. Conditions with/without the acquisition of the right were crossed with the presence/absence of negative externalities associated with transgressions of the official’s duty. One last (fifth) condition mimicked other bribery games in the literature which rely on loaded frames and negative externalities but no information on rights and duties. We found that both the presence of externalities and information about rights were effective bribery deterrents, and that bribe offers and acceptances were most discouraged with their synergic effect. Interestingly, officials followed prescriptive information even when it was inefficient to do so (when there were no externalities), and implied choosing against their material self-interest (by rejecting a bribe), and not reciprocating bribe offers. We conclude by highlighting the limits of making generalizations from results without explicit normative information and the relevance of present findings as anti-corruption behavioral insights.