In most bribery games in the literature, there is no mention of rights and duties associated to participants’ roles. Authors have hitherto relied on loaded frames, negative externalities, and the possibility of sanctions to implicitly signal prescriptive norms. We argue that participants’ interpretation of these factors may not be univocal. In this study, a participant in the role of a common citizen either did or did not acquire the right to obtain a monetary benefit and could offer a bribe to an associated participant in the role of public official. This participant, in turn, had an explicit duty of providing the benefit only if the citizen acquired the right to it. Conditions with/without the acquisition of the right were crossed with the presence/absence of negative externalities associated with transgressions of the official’s duty. One last (fifth) condition mimicked other bribery games in the literature which rely on loaded frames and negative externalities but no information on rights and duties. We found that both the presence of externalities and information about rights were effective bribery deterrents, and that bribe offers and acceptances were most discouraged with their synergic effect. Interestingly, officials followed prescriptive information even when it was inefficient to do so (when there were no externalities), and implied choosing against their material self-interest (by rejecting a bribe), and not reciprocating bribe offers. We conclude by highlighting the limits of making generalizations from results without explicit normative information and the relevance of present findings as anti-corruption behavioral insights.

中文翻译：

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规范性规范和负外部性对实验室贿赂决策的影响

在文献中的大多数贿赂游戏中，没有提到与参与者角色相关的权利和义务。迄今为止，作者一直依靠加载框架、负面外部性和制裁的可能性来暗示规定性规范。我们认为参与者对这些因素的解释可能并不明确。在这项研究中，扮演普通公民角色的参与者要么获得了获得金钱利益的权利，要么没有获得获得金钱利益的权利，并且可以向扮演公职人员角色的相关参与者提供贿赂。反过来，该参与者有明确的义务，只有在公民获得福利的情况下才提供福利。有/没有获得权利的条件与与违反官员职责相关的负面外部性的存在/不存在交叉。最后一个（第五个）条件模仿了文献中的其他贿赂游戏，这些游戏依赖于加载的框架和负外部性，但没有关于权利和义务的信息。我们发现，外部性的存在和有关权利的信息都是有效的贿赂威慑，并且最不鼓励提供和接受贿赂，因为它们具有协同效应。有趣的是，即使这样做效率低下（没有外部性），官员也会遵循规定的信息，并暗示选择违背他们的物质利益（通过拒绝贿赂），而不是回报贿赂提议。最后，我们强调了在没有明确规范信息的情况下从结果中进行概括的局限性，以及当前调查结果作为反腐败行为见解的相关性。