The Laboratory for Comparative Social Research announces the next regular seminar, which will be held as a zoom session on October, 30 at 03:30 p.m. CET (04:30 p.m. Moscow time, GMT+3). Ekaterina Nastina (LCSR HSE) will deliver a report "Justifiability of Free Riding and Quality of Institutions: The Moderating Role of Personal Values and Culture ".

To participate, please, register via the link.

Abstract:

This study delves into the factors contributing to variation in disapproval of free-riding behavior across the world. While some cross-cultural researchers hold that attitudes towards such behaviors as tax evasion, fare avoidance and benefit fraud show little variance in different cultures due to the universal value of honesty (e.g. Dülmer, 2013; Vauclair and Fischer, 2011), those applying institutional perspective (e.g. Letki 2006; James, 2015) show that the existing, and non-trivial, variance can be explained by such factors as the effectiveness of the government and rule of law in the country. In this paper we aim to replicate the important role of the quality of institutions, while suggesting that its effect may vary for people and cultures with different degree of emancipative values salience, as well as in tight and loose societies. Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Survey (EVS) across 95 countries, we demonstrate that although cross-country differences towards free riding are generally not drastic, the most noticeable heterogeneity occurs in unfairly governed societies. Our findings suggest that while individuals in the countries with just and accountable institutions, indeed, tend to greatly disapprove of free-riding behavior, in cases when institutions falter and the frame of honesty and fairness may not be applied to such acts to the same degree, individual values and culture prioritizing respect for authority and following the rules may serve as compensatory factors in upholding normative order.

Everyone interested is invited!