Gender differences in deception behaviour – the role of the counterpart

Abstract

In a tax compliance experiment with real face-to-face communication between declaring subjects and officers, we analyse the role of both the subject’s and the officer’s gender for deceptive behaviour. We do not find, first, that the amount of underreporting generally depends on the officer’s gender, and second, that the matching of genders plays a role for the deceptive behaviour. Moreover, as a reaction to a high rather than a low penalty, women and men both reduce deceptive behaviour to the same extent and therefore exhibit the same risk-taking attitude.

Keywords:

• gender
• compliance
• face-to-face communication

JEL Classification:

• J16
• H26
• C91

Acknowlegements

We thank Munich Experimental Laboratory for Economic and Social Sciences (MELESSA) of the University of Munich for providing laboratory resources. We thank Hans Mueller for developing and programming the web-based environment. We thank Sophia Baur, Nina Bonge, Ludwig Grill, David Houser, Sarah Marfeld, Daniela Miehling, Christoph Rüschstroer, Verena Schönecker, Maria Selmansberger and Jenny Zeiser for excellent research assistance. We thank Luisa Herbst, Kai Konrad, Harald Lang and Tim Stolper for helpful comments. We are also grateful to customs officers from the airports of Berlin-Tegel, Berlin-Schönefeld and Munich for giving us valuable insights into their work. The usual caveat applies.

Notes

¹ The customs officers were encouraged by the customs administration to volunteer for these interviews. The 28 interview questions were raised by an interviewer and the (semi-open) answers were voice-recorded and transcribed. These also included questions about the officer’s age, experience and position. See also Konrad et al. (2012).

² The use of more than just one room preserves anonymity and prevents subjects from learning something about the customs officer.

³ The subjects were recruited using the software ORSEE (Greiner, 2004).

⁴ The currency in the laboratory was named talers; 1000 talers were converted into 16 euros.

⁵ The people acting as officers were student assistants working at the Institute. A further incentivation of the officers is not necessary since the research focus is entirely on the declaring individuals. Besides, recall that each customs officer encounters each subject just once. Therefore any possibility for collusive arrangements between subjects and officers is ruled out.

⁶ This prediction is simply obtained by evaluating the logistic distribution function at −0.5744.