Abstract
Building on theoretical notions that severe sanctions (more than mild ones) can communicate
that sanctioned behavior is morally unacceptable, we argued that particularly authorities
who enact the sanction procedures in a fair manner stimulate compliance with their
decisions. This is because such authorities should be considered legitimate to communicate
what is morally acceptable and unacceptable. This interactive effect of sanction size and
procedural fairness on compliance should thus be mediated by moral evaluations of the
authority. A field survey and an experiment revealed support for these predictions. These
results thus support a non-instrumental perspective on the effectiveness of sanction severity
in increasing compliance with authorities.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 120-130 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Journal of Economic Psychology |
Volume | 32 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 27 Sep 2010 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Feb 2011 |
Keywords
- Sanction severity
- Procedural fairness
- Compliance
- Moral evaluations