A Cross-National Comparison of Attitudes, Personality, Behaviour, and Social Comparison in Tax Evasion Experiments

Abstract

This paper reports on an experimental study of tax evasion in which members of the Dutch public participated. Three variables were manipulated: type of social comparison (personal or categorical), nature of comparison (inferior, neutral, or superior), and the period in which the tax return was audited. In addition, participants completed a series of questionnaires based on the work of Hessing and Elffers (1985). No effects of type and nature of social comparison on the propensity to evade taxes and on the magnitude of taxes evaded were found. The frequency of tax evasion was positively correlated with alienation, competitiveness, disinhibition, and attitudes to tax evasion and negatively correlated with age. The magnitude of tax evasion was positively correlated only with alienation and competitiveness. This pattern of correlations is generally similar to findings obtained in research on documented tax evasion behaviour, although in contrast to the latter research, attitudes towards tax evasion were significant correlates of experimental evasion behaviour. These findings were also broadly comparable to a similar British experimental study except that tax evasion was more frequent in the Dutch sample.