Summary
We use a unique dataset based on reported direct personal bribes paid by arts students in China at examinations and in the college admissions process to study willingness to bribe. We find that individual willingness to bribe depends on personal characteristics rather than on the attributes of the admissions process at different colleges and universities. The perceived level of corruption, personal attitudes towards corruption, academic attainment, and the rank of a college are significant predictors of bribery. Based on self-reporting, students from middle-income families have a higher likelihood of engaging in bribery than students from poor or rich families. There are no significant gender differences in bribing behavior. We acknowledge and seek to account for the possibility of identity-confirming expressive behavior in the survey responses.
Code and Datasets
The author(s) published code and data associated with this article in the ZBW Journal Data Archive, a storage platform for datasets. See: https://doi.org/10.15456/jbnst.2015181.091913.
© 2015 by Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart