Compliance and accountability-seeking: Evidence from a field experiment in Argentina

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Krakowski, Krzysztof; Ronconi, Lucas
• 署名单位: University of London; King's College London; IZA Institute Labor Economics
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103492
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: compliance; ACCOUNTABILITY; NORMS; SANCTIONS; argentina

摘要

Does compliance with low-cost civic duties increase accountability-seeking behaviors among citizenry? We address this question by conducting a field experiment at train stations in Buenos Aires. We create exogenous variation in compliance with paying the public transportation fare by: (i) highlighting sanctions for noncompliance and ii) appealing to social norms whereby 90% passengers pay the ticket. We find that both sanctions and norms treatments raise compliance. However, only appeals to social norms make treated passengers more willing to sign a petition demanding quality public transportation service-our measure of accountability-seeking behavior. To probe the mechanisms explaining these patterns, we show that compliance invoked by adherence to norms makes subjects feel more entitled to demand accountability and trust the government to a greater extent. Our findings suggest that raising compliance through appeals to social norms may thus have wider benefits for civic behaviors.