“For Law, God or Country: A Field Experiment on Normative and Legal Pressure as a Tool for Improving Public Service Delivery in the Philippines.”
Abstract:
This project tests the efficacy of informational appeals in reducing postal service malfeasance, thereby providing insight into how psychological strategies may reduce corruption in public service delivery. The experiment tests behavioral responses to socially, religiously and legally based cues designed to deter the theft of mail packages sent to residential addresses outside of Manila, Philippines. Beginning in the summer of 2009, 150 packages were sent in waves to geographically dispersed addresses, randomly selected from an address database of 1978 households. Each package contained identical contents and differed only by a large, exterior sticker appealing to either norms of Filipino pride and social responsibility (social treatment), legal requirements of fair delivery and punishment for non-compliance (legal treatment), Biblical excerpts detailing dominant social norms regarding theft (religious treatment) or a plea to recycle packaging materials (placebo, control). The paper finds that the probability of successful package delivery across "religious" and "social" treatment groups was not significantly different than the control. However, packages with the "legal" treatment were twice as likely to go missing and therefore not be received by the intended recipient. The findings encourage critical thinking about the deterrent effects of legal messages, which may incite opportunistic behavior rather than improve public service delivery.
This project tests the efficacy of informational appeals in reducing postal service malfeasance, thereby providing insight into how psychological strategies may reduce corruption in public service delivery. The experiment tests behavioral responses to socially, religiously and legally based cues designed to deter the theft of mail packages sent to residential addresses outside of Manila, Philippines. Beginning in the summer of 2009, 150 packages were sent in waves to geographically dispersed addresses, randomly selected from an address database of 1978 households. Each package contained identical contents and differed only by a large, exterior sticker appealing to either norms of Filipino pride and social responsibility (social treatment), legal requirements of fair delivery and punishment for non-compliance (legal treatment), Biblical excerpts detailing dominant social norms regarding theft (religious treatment) or a plea to recycle packaging materials (placebo, control). The paper finds that the probability of successful package delivery across "religious" and "social" treatment groups was not significantly different than the control. However, packages with the "legal" treatment were twice as likely to go missing and therefore not be received by the intended recipient. The findings encourage critical thinking about the deterrent effects of legal messages, which may incite opportunistic behavior rather than improve public service delivery.
http://www.golden.polisci.ucla.edu/recent_papers/nancygermanyreplication.pdf