Abstract

This article examines the role of the mass media in shaping attitudes toward corporate tax avoidance. Using an original and novel survey experiment of the European Union’s ruling against Apple in Ireland, we find that media frames play an important role in shaping citizens attitudes. We find that respondents exposed to treatments questioning the morality and fairness of Ireland’s facilitation of Apple tax avoidance are more likely to acknowledge the negative impact on Ireland’s EU neighbours. The more nationalistic the media frame, the more likely respondents disagree with the EU ruling against Apple. These results are largely robust to the inclusion of control variables for ideology, age, previous voting behaviour, and gender. These findings suggest that media frames are an important factor in shoring up popular support for those components of growth regimes that are politically controversial. More broadly, our findings suggest that to understand the determinants of national varieties of capitalism - or growth models - we need to examine the role of the country-specific media.

摘要

本文考察了大众媒体在塑造企业避税态度方面的作用。通过对欧盟在爱尔兰对苹果公司的裁决进行的一项原创且新颖的调查实验，我们发现媒体框架在塑造公民态度方面发挥着重要作用。我们发现，受到质疑爱尔兰协助 Apple 避税的道德和公平待遇的受访者更有可能承认对爱尔兰的欧盟邻国的负面影响。媒体框架越民族主义，受访者就越有可能不同意欧盟对苹果的裁决。这些结果对于包含意识形态、年龄、以前的投票行为和性别的控制变量在很大程度上是稳健的。这些调查结果表明，媒体框架是支持那些在政治上有争议的增长机制组成部分的民众支持的重要因素。更广泛地，