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Corruption in China: What Shapes Social Attitudes Toward It?

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A Correction to this article was published on 12 April 2019

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Abstract

This research investigates the determinants of attitudes toward corruption in China using micro-level data. We use survey data on 6000 individuals from 28 provinces to estimate logit models that show how individual and provincial determinants shape attitudes toward corruption. Respondents who have higher education, belong to higher social class, live in rural areas, and are members of the Communist Party of China, think corruption is less useful than the other respondents. Negative attitude toward corruption is related to higher education, lower social class, and membership in the Communist Party of China.

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  • 12 April 2019

    Due to an unfortunate oversight the author name Ilari Määtta has been misspelt. It should be read Ilari Määttä.

Notes

  1. In comparison, the corruption perception index provided by Transparency International is based on opinions of business people and analysts, and assesses how wide respondents think that corruption is.

  2. Data analyzed in this paper were collected as part of the research project “China General Social Survey (CGSS),” which was carried out by the National Survey Research Center, Renmin University of China (NSRC). The authors appreciate Center’s assistance in providing the data.

  3. We also tried estimations by including Age and Age² to test a possible nonlinear relation between age and corruption variables, but Age² is not significant.

  4. See Song (2014) for developments on the hukou system in China.

  5. We also perform estimations with the size of the mining sector, measured by the share of total workers in the mining sector, following its use by Dong and Torgler (2013). Nevertheless, this variable is not significant in any estimations. We do not include this variable in the final estimations because of its high collinearity with the Gini coefficient.

  6. We have also used an ordered probit model. Our results are not affected by the model choice.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the comments from the two anonymous referees.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bank of Finland, Helsinki, Finland

    Zuzana Fungacova

  2. Institute of Economics, Technology University of Braunschweig, Brunswick, Germany

    Ilari Määttä

  3. EM Strasbourg Business School, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

    Laurent Weill

  4. Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), Moscow, Russia

    Laurent Weill

Authors
  1. Zuzana Fungacova
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  2. Ilari Määttä
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  3. Laurent Weill
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Correspondence to Laurent Weill.

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Fungacova, Z., Määttä, I. & Weill, L. Corruption in China: What Shapes Social Attitudes Toward It?. Comp Econ Stud 61, 493–518 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41294-018-00083-8

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