(Ch)eating for oneself or cheating for others? Experimental evidence from young politicians and students in Kenya

Lisa Hoffmann
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Lisa Hoffmann: German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)

No xnez5, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Honesty and orientation toward the common good are key qualities that people expect from their elected politicians. However, dishonesty in the forms of corruption, vote-buying and identity politics are not uncommon and can lead to a loss of trust in politics. This paper focuses on the cheating behavior of aspirant politicians and students in Kenya. I applied online coin flip experiments as means to detect cheating. In a between-subject design, participants could either (1) cheat to the benefit of a common good, (2) cheat to the benefit of their ethnic group, or (3) cheat to their own monetary advantage. On average, 38% of participants report the payoff-maximizing number of successful coin tosses with no difference between aspirant politicians and students. However, aspirant politicians report the payoff-maximizing outcome more readily than students when cheating benefits a common good. Perceiving corruption as justifiable is correlated with reporting higher numbers of successful coin tosses in the online experiment.

Date: 2023-03-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:xnez5

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/xnez5

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