Coercive and legitimate authority impact tax honesty: evidence from behavioral and ERP experiments.

ABSTRACT: Cooperation in social systems such as tax honesty is of central importance in our modern societies. However, we know little about cognitive and neural processes driving decisions to evade or pay taxes. This study focuses on the impact of perceived tax authority and examines the mental chronometry mirrored in ERP data allowing a deeper understanding about why humans cooperate in tax systems. We experimentally manipulated coercive and legitimate authority and studied its impact on cooperation and underlying cognitive (experiment 1, 2) and neuronal (experiment 2) processes. Experiment 1 showed that in a condition of coercive authority, tax payments are lower, decisions are faster and participants report more rational reasoning and enforced compliance, however, less voluntary cooperation than

SUBMITTER: Gangl K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5490685 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature