When happy people make society unhappy: Emotions affect tax compliance behavior

Author(s)

Martin Fochmann, Frank Hechtner, Erico Kirchler, Peter N C Mohr

Abstract

Emotions affect judgments and decision making. Our paper presents a study to show that incidental background emotions (i.e., emotions not related to the actual decision) influence individuals’ tax compliance attitudes and behavior. A large-scale survey of 22,220 German taxpayers and a controlled laboratory experiment provide evidence that positive background emotions reduce willingness to comply compared to aversive (negative) background emotions. The participants in our survey show less favorable tax compliance attitudes on weekends, which are usually associated with more positive background emotions. These findings are supported by the results of a controlled laboratory experiment in which background emotions were induced by standardized pictures. Individuals choose to evade taxes more often after being exposed to positive emotions than after being exposed to aversive emotions.

Organisation(s)

Department of Occupational, Economic and Social Psychology

External organisation(s)

Freie Universität Berlin (FU), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), IHS - Institut für Höhere Studien und wissenschaftliche Forschung, Center for Civil Society Research

Journal

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Volume

229

ISSN

0167-2681

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106854

Publication date

01-2025

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

501029 Economic psychology

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/a4eaf9d1-1271-4594-b303-9fe83264acad