Can fines lead to more of an undesirable behavior, rather than deterring it? This was the surprising finding in Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, “A Fine is a Price” published in the Journal of Legal Studies in 2000. In this field experiment at Israeli daycares, the introduction of fines caused an increase in late pick-ups by parents. The study has been frequently cited, especially for its suggestion that a fine can act as a price for non-compliance that “crowds-out” social norms and motivations for individuals.

In this article, we conduct two related studies to explore the robustness of Gneezy & Rustichini’s findings and the relevance of their suggested explanations. We seek to replicate their results using experimental surveys administered on MTurk, an increasingly common methodology in empirical legal studies, psychology and economics. While not an exact replication, it allows us to control aspects of the experimental design that are difficult to replicate in the field. We are also able to directly investigate whether fines persistently change the way respondents perceive the consequences (signaling, completing the contract) or relevant social motivations (crowding-out), as suggested by Gneezy & Rustichini. In the first study we translate the original daycare field setting into a vignette-based experimental survey. Our second study similarly investigates the effect of introducing a fine on income tax reporting compliance – an example suggested in the original study. In both studies, respondents are randomized into experimental conditions exposing them to one of two alternate fines or a social norm-based measure. We solicit multiple compliance measures for respondents along with measures of the importance of the alternate explanations to their decisions.

Our survey results do not replicate the original findings. In both our daycare and tax studies, the introduction of fines causes respondents to reduce non-compliant behaviour. Respondents expect others to behave similarly. Fines do not cause respondents to adjust their concerns about an incomplete contract consistently with Gneezy & Rustichini’s theory. They also show very little evidence of fines crowding out social motivations, despite being responsive to our social treatments. The effects of fines on outcome behaviours and respondents’ reasons are transitory. Once the fines are removed, our respondents return to their baseline behaviours. The survey results are consistent with intuitive judgments (and standard rational-choice theory) that fines deter. A survey is not a field experiment; however, our results suggest that more research is required to understand when and how any “fine is a price” effect may arise.

罚款会导致更多不受欢迎的行为，而不是阻止这种行为吗？这是Uri Gneezy和Aldo Rustichini于2000年在《法律研究杂志》上发表的“罚款就是价格”中的令人惊讶的发现。在以色列日托机构的实地实验中，罚款的引入导致了后期提货的增加。父母。这项研究经常被引用，特别是因为它的建议是罚款可以作为违规的代价，违规会“挤出”个人的社会规范和动机。

在本文中，我们进行了两项相关研究，以探讨Gneezy＆Rustichini的发现的稳健性及其建议的解释的相关性。我们力图通过在MTurk上进行的实验调查来复制他们的结果，MTurk是经验法学，心理学和经济学中一种越来越普遍的方法。尽管不是精确的复制，但它使我们能够控制实验设计中难以在现场进行复制的各个方面。正如Gneezy＆Rustichini所建议的那样，我们还能够直接调查罚款是否会持续改变受访者对后果（签署，完成合同）的看法或相关的社会动机（排挤）。在第一个研究中，我们将原始的日托场所设置转换为基于小插图的实验调查。我们的第二项研究同样调查了引入罚款对所得税申报合规性的影响-原始研究中提出了一个例子。在这两项研究中，被调查者被随机分配到实验条件下，使其面临两种替代罚款之一或基于社会规范的措施。我们为受访者征集了多种合规性措施，以及替代性解释对其决定的重要性的度量。

我们的调查结果没有重复原始调查结果。在我们的日托和税收研究中，罚款的引入使受访者减少了违规行为。受访者希望其他人的行为也类似。罚款不会使受访者根据Gneezy＆Rustichini的理论调整对不完整合同的担忧。尽管对我们的社会待遇有所反应，但他们也几乎没有证据表明罚款会挤出社会动机。罚款对结果行为和受访者原因的影响是短暂的。一旦罚款被取消，我们的受访者将恢复其基本行为。调查结果与罚款的直觉判断（和标准的理性选择理论）一致。调查不是实地实验；然而，