On the individual decisions to commit corruption: A methodological complement

Abstract

This paper contributes to the analysis of corruption by complementing two different methodologies to determine the behavior of citizens who Participate in corruption acts, focusing in Mexico. A quantitative analysis, combined with a survey and econometric techniques, is used to determine sociodemographic and institutional factors affecting such behavior, and complemented by focus groups, collecting some knowledge on how informal institutions and norms could promote or block corrupt behavior. It is shown that there is a trade-off between perceptions, social dynamics and individual incentives for corrupt behavior within an institutional framework, creating a kind of vicious circle difficult to break up.

Why Are the Poor More Vulnerable to Bribery in Africa? The Institutional Effects of Services

“…For example, income is positively associated with bribery for health care in Vietnam (Nguyen Van, 2008), for several services in Mexico (Guerrero and Rodriguez-Oreggia 2008;Morris, 2008) in Uganda and Peru (Hunt & Laszlo, 2012), and across multi-country samples (Mocan, 2008). However, Morris (2008), Rose and Mishler (2010) and Tavits (2010) all fail to find a significant association between income and bribery in Mexico, Russia and Estonia respectively.…”

Engaging in corruption: The influence of cultural values and contagion effects at the microlevel

“…To date, only a limited number of studies have started to investigate the determinants of corruption at the individual level (e.g., Swamy et al, 2001;Svensson, 2003;Torgler and Valev, 2006;Dong and Torgler, 2009;Dong et al 2012;Guerrero and Rodríguez-Oreggia, 2008;Mocan, 2008;Torgler and Valev 2010). Mocan (2008), for example, finds that highly educated and high-income individuals have higher exposure to being asked for a bribe by a government official, that males are more frequent targets of bribery, and that living in larger cities increases the risk of exposure to bribery.…”

“…we use as covariates in our econometric model. Subjective values with regards to political interest, trust and materialism for each respondent in each of the 26 countries are also used as covariates in our analysis (Dong and Torgler, 2009;Torgler and Valev, 2010;Guerrero and Rodríguez-Oreggia, 2008). Descriptive statistics of the covariates contained in the ESS data which we use in our analysis are provided in Table 3.…”

Aproximaciones Psicosociales a la Corrupción: Una Revisión Teórica

“…Por tanto, es completamente necesario desarrollar nuevas herramientas metodológicas que busquen aproximarse al fenómeno de la corrupción. Así mismo, es básico comprender cómo son construidas las percepciones, cómo se ven los ciudadanos a sí mismos y a las instituciones públicas en relación con la corrupción (Guerrero & Rodríguez-Oreggia, 2008). Otra propuesta de investigación está ligada a la búsqueda de procesos de carácter psicosocial que estén influyendo en la decisión de una persona a la hora de cometer un acto de corrupción, es decir, investigar por qué en algunos contextos o grupos es más probable que una persona se comporte de manera corrupta mientras que no en otros.…”