Faith in Trump and the willingness to punish white-collar crime: Chinese Americans as an out-group

Abstract

ObjectivesThe first goal of the study was to investigate the willingness of former President Trump's supporters to punish a particular form of white-collar crime (i.e., bank fraud). The second objective was to test whether the race of the person who committed the bank fraud influenced Trump supporters' willingness to punish. Methods This study used data from factorial vignettes that were administered to a national sample of adults in 2021 (N = 1509). A 2 (race of the individual who committed bank fraud) × 2 (prior criminal record) × 2 (COVID-19 related fraud) between-subject experimental design was used. Multivariate techniques were used to regress the dependent variables (e.g., length of prison sentence) onto the faith in Trump scale, the experimental conditions, and other variables. Results Participants who expressed a strong faith in Trump were less likely to support sending an adult male who committed bank fraud to prison, but they were more supportive of deporting the individual to another country. The effect of faith in Trump changed when the race of the person who committed bank fraud was manipulated. Specifically, participants who expressed greater faith in Trump were more likely to view bank fraud as harmful and wrong, more likely to support the use of prison and recommend longer prison sentences, and expressed greater support for deporting the individual when he was depicted as Chinese American. Conclusions Allegiance to the former president likely increased the targeting of Chinese Americans as out-group members in need of greater social control. Keywords Deportation • Politics • Public opinion • Punishment • White-collar crimeResearch suggests that US presidents are capable of shaping public opinion. They represent the country and are the lead policy maker; their words matter (Cohen,

The donation method: A new behavioral measure for white collar crime?

“…Some have used vignettes to assess individuals' hypothetical willingness to commit various offenses-including credit card fraud and/or embezzlement (Craig, 2017(Craig, , 2019Reed & Rorie, 2023); price-fixing (Piquero, 2012); and environmental crimes (Ray & Jones, 2011). Some have used vignettes to assess individuals' hypothetical willingness to punish white collar criminals by asking participants to recommend appropriate monetary fines and/or prison sentences (Cox et al, 2016;Grolleau et al, 2020;Michel, 2016;Reisig et al, 2022). Others have used them to estimate the non-monetary costs of white collar crime by assessing participants' hypothetical willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce corporate/financial crimes (Cohen, 2015;Layana & Lee, 2020;Piquero et al, 2011) and/or support crime reduction programs including victim compensation, offender punishment, and prevention programming (Galvin et al, 2018;Raffan Gowar et al, 2023;Simpson et al, 2022).…”