Unraveling the Paradox of Anticorruption Messaging:Experimental Evidence from a Tax Administration Reform

Corruption—and the widespread perception of it—poses significant obstacles to development by eroding institutional trust and reducing citizens’ willingness to pay taxes. Yet, government efforts to improve public perceptions by combating corruption may prove ineffective—or even backfire—when confronted with entrenched pessimistic beliefs. We propose that providing an external benchmark of corruption to shift the reference point before highlighting government actions can mitigate these negative effects. In a survey experiment exploiting an institutional reform within Honduras’ tax agency, we find that messages focusing solely on reform efforts have limited or negative effects. By contrast, a combined message that first corrects pessimistic beliefs and then highlights anti-corruption efforts significantly reduces perceived corruption and tax evasion intentions. A field experiment with approximately 45,000 taxpayers confirms that this sequencing approach increases actual tax compliance. These findings suggest that belief updating is possible—but only when information is structured to first engage and recalibrate skeptical priors.