Shaming of Tax Evaders: Empirical Evidence on Perceptions of Retributive Justice and Tax Compliance Intentions

Although naming-and-shaming (shaming) is a commonly used tax enforcement mechanism, little is known about the efficacy of shaming tax evaders. Through two experiments, this study examines the effects of shaming tax evaders on third-party observers’ perceptions of retributive justice and tax compliance intentions, and whether the salience of persuasion of observers moderates these relationships. Based on insights from defiance theory, the message learning model, and persuasive communications, this study predicts and finds that shaming evaders increases observers’ tax compliance intentions. Furthermore, the results show that higher persuasion, which includes sanction and normative appeals, affects observers’ tax compliance intentions. This study also suggests that shaming has a positive effect on perceptions of retributive justice. Importantly, the results reveal that perceptions of retributive justice in shaming punishment mediate the effect of shaming on tax compliance intentions. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Coping with Digital Extortion: An Experimental Study of Benefit Appeals and Normative Appeals

Digital extortion has emerged as a significant threat to organizations that rely on information technologies for their operations. Using human subject experimentation, we study the effectiveness of message appeals in encouraging defenders to adopt two mitigation strategies, investment in security and refusal to pay ransoms, to digital extortion threats. We explore two types of appeals, benefit and normative, for this purpose. We find that the decisions of the defenders (representing any organization that can be a potential victim) deviate from the predictions of game theory. However, given the strategic interactions between the defenders and the attacker as well as noisy decision-making behaviors, it is challenging to untangle the influence of the appeals on the defenders. We develop a structural model based on the quantal response equilibrium framework to measure how message appeals change the defenders’ utilities of investment and payment refusal. Although the interventions may be successful in increasing the utilities of investment and/or payment refusal, their impacts on investment rate and payment rate are mitigated by the attacker reducing ransoms. Thus, it is challenging for an intervention to significantly boost a community’s investment rate or to suppress the ransom payment rate. We characterize how security outcomes of a community (including expected ransom, attack rate, investment rate, and payment rate) vary with the defenders’ utilities of investment and pay refusal. This paper was accepted by Chris Forman, information systems.

Dissecting the dimension of protection: Caligae and Scutum in the evaluative model of normative appeals

A normative appeal indicates that one should (or should not) do a certain action in a concrete situation. According to the Evaluative Model of Normative Appeals (EMNA), willingness to comply with these messages depends on an appraisal formed by two dimensions: formality and protection. In this work we center on the dimension of protection, proposing that it can be divided into two components: avoiding physical or psychological damage (scutum) and affording the performance of the main intended action (caligae). We conducted two studies to test this twofold meaning of protection. In Study 1 (N = 525), we manipulated the coherence of regulatory focus (promotion vs. control vs. prevention) with salience of the components of protection (caligae vs. control vs. scutum). In Study 2 (N = 513), we separately measured the perception of each component referred to an actual normative appeal (i.e., “To get into a class punctually”). The results showed that the manipulated salience and the measured perception of caligae and scutum elicits (Study 1) and predicts (Study 2) higher willingness to comply with normative appeals. Theoretical and applied implications of the results are discussed.

West Papua

This chapter focuses on the long running independence effort in West Papua, an example of the weak combative type of secession movement. It demonstrates what can happen to secessionism in weakly institutionalized settings. The chapter discusses the two dominant normative appeals: the primary one stresses human rights and the second common appeal focuses on decolonization. It also analyses how key features related to electoral politics and freedom of speech prevent the secessionist movement from attaining the level of political voice that one normally finds in a democratized setting. West Papua is integrated with the larger state and yet cannot engage in electoral capture. Unlike Bougainville, it faces a powerful military opponent whom it cannot dislodge from the territory nor fight to a standstill. By this context, the chapter documents the tactics of the secessionists in West Papua that evolved in relation to their inability to challenge the state militarily.

Political Mobilization in the Laboratory: The Role of Norms and Communication

Many field experiments have shown that political mobilization increases voter turnout, with personalized strategies considerably outperforming widely administered ones. Despite the abundant evidence, there is no systematic explanation of what drives citizens’ response to mobilization. In this paper, I propose and experimentally test in the laboratory a theoretical framework that investigates the psychological mechanisms underlying mobilization in both partisan and non-partisan settings. I conjecture that material mobilization efforts should increase participation because of reciprocity concerns. The transmission of normative appeals through interpersonal communication should have a similar effect by making a group norm salient. The results from two experiments show that the combination of a mobilization effort with a normative appeal leads to a significant and substantial increase in participation in both settings. Using content analysis, I show that this interaction effect is due to the way normative appeals are perceived when the sender is in charge of mobilization.

Sacred hearts and pumps: cardiology and the conflicted body politic (1500–1900)

This article examines how conflicting notions of the body politic between the natural and the spiritual have contextualised the evolution of cardiology. After a brief look at the place of the heart in biblical, patristic and medieval notions of the church, the article turns to the Reformation period. While Martin Luther moved theological gravity to the individual’s heart and conscience, his contemporary Michael Servetus described the pulmonary cycle in the context of an antitrinitarian theology condemned as theological and political heresy. In the early modern period, nature conceived as creation grounded sovereign political authority, which science could then align with. Whereas William Harvey still adhered to an Aristotelian teleology, René Descartes and subsequent mechanistic contributions to cardiology were flanked by an intense ‘cardiolatry’. Both, it is argued, are two sides of the same, almost non-corporeal coin. The emerging Enlightened epistemology allowed for a position distinct from both sovereign and ecclesial powers. The French Revolution was a paradigm shift: the ancien régime falls, and its Sacred Heart devotion is mocked; the new ‘Erastian’ state-university emerges as the context of cardiology. These developments are reflected in the life of René Laënnec and in cultural interpretations of the heart later in the 19th century. It is shown that the heart as a doubly inscribed, both biological and spiritual organ, played a central role in theological, and therefore political and scientific notions of the body politic. These continue to haunt the present, allowing us to interpret normative appeals to the heart particularly in political contexts.

How social norms are often a barrier to addressing climate change but can be part of the solution

We argue that the behavioral challenges posed by climate change are fundamentally problems of social influence. Behaviors that perpetuate climate change are often opaque in their consequences; thus, we look to others to infer how to act. Yet unsustainable behaviors, like driving and eating meat, are often the norm; conformity to such norms is a major hurdle to a more sustainable world. Nonetheless, we argue that social norms can also be a powerful lever for positive change. Drawing on two streams of recent research, we show that well-implemented social norm strategies can motivate positive steps even in the face of a negative current norm and even in individuals’ private behavior absent the judgment of others. First, appeals to dynamic norms – information about change in others or trends in norms over time – can lead people to conform to the change itself, even if this change violates current norms. Second, framing normative appeals in terms of an invitation to work with others toward a common goal can increase the motivation to join in. Despite ubiquitous unsustainable norms, careful theory-based representations of social norms can help us make progress on climate change.