In many areas such as consumer law or competition law, legislators can opt between two alternative forms of sanctions to remedy wrongdoing: they can impose an infringer to pay either a fine or a compensation. There is a major research gap regarding the infringers’ reactions to the different forms of sanctions. This paper reports an experiment that investigated infringers’ willingness to pay compensation versus fines. Results show that regardless of victim characteristics (whether the victim is a company or an NGO), infringers are willing to pay higher amounts in compensation than in fines, view compensation as more fair and believe compensation is better able to restore their reputation. Compensation and fines did not differ in the extent to which they stimulated infringers’ willingness to take precautionary measures. Participants who inflicted harm to a company rather than an NGO, surprisingly viewed their sanction as more fair, irrespective of the type of sanction in place. Our findings highlight some important strengths of compensation from a infringer’s point of view that are to be weighed in the policy debate.

在消费者法或竞争法等许多领域，立法者可以选择两种替代形式的制裁来纠正不当行为：他们可以强制侵权者支付罚款或赔偿金。关于侵权者对不同形式制裁的反应，存在重大的研究空白。本文报告了一项调查侵权者支付赔偿与罚款意愿的实验。结果表明，无论受害者特征如何（受害者是公司还是非政府组织），侵权者都愿意支付比罚款更高的赔偿金额，认为赔偿更公平，并认为赔偿更能恢复其声誉。补偿和罚款在激发侵权者采取预防措施的意愿方面没有差异。对公司而非非政府组织造成伤害的参与者出人意料地认为他们的制裁更公平，而不管实施的制裁类型如何。我们的研究结果从侵权者的角度突出了补偿的一些重要优势，这些优势将在政策辩论中进行权衡。