Identifying legitimacy: Experimental evidence on compliance with authority

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Social Psychology
• Public Policy

Background:

• Understanding citizen compliance with authority is crucial for effective governance and law enforcement.
• Distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for compliance is methodologically challenging.
• Previous research often conflates the effects of legitimacy on intrinsic versus extrinsic incentives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally determine the extent to which perceived legitimacy influences intrinsic motivation to comply with authority.
• To disentangle the effects of an authority's actions on intrinsic and extrinsic behavioral channels.
• To provide causally credible evidence on how authorities can shape citizen behavior through legitimacy.

Main Methods:

• An experimental approach was designed to isolate the impact of improved enforcement fairness on citizen behavior.
• The study employed two experiments to differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivational pathways.
• Costly actions by the authority aimed at enhancing fairness were implemented to observe behavioral changes.

Main Results:

• An authority's attempt to institute fairer enforcement significantly increased prosocial behavior by 10-12 percentage points.
• This increase in prosocial behavior was primarily driven by the intrinsic motivational channel.
• A follow-up experiment ruled out reciprocity or "paying back" the authority as the motivation for increased compliance.

Conclusions:

• Enhancing the legitimacy of an authority through fairer enforcement directly and positively impacts citizens' intrinsic motivation.
• Authority actions can shape citizen behavior by enhancing legitimacy, independent of material or extrinsic incentives.
• These findings have significant policy implications for domains where legitimacy and other incentives interact.