What Makes Us Exploit the Community? The Influence of Individual Characteristics on Committing Tax Evasion and Insurance Fraud

• Activity Number: 444
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Ivar Krumpal*+
• Companies: University of Leipzig
• Keywords: sensitive questions ; social desirability bias ; measurement error ; the crosswise model ; white-collar crime ; survey design

Abstract

While most of the research on individual predictors of antisocial behavior focuses on the street and violent crimes, surprisingly less attention is paid to white-collar crime. In our experimental survey study we focus on tax evasion and insurance fraud. To estimate the prevalence of these crimes and to study the influence of individual characteristics on committing these crimes, we use a special interview technique for sensitive surveys (the crosswise model; CM), and compare it to direct questioning. The CM makes the interview conditions in sensitive surveys more anonymous. Therefore, the CM is expected to induce a higher sense of privacy on the question-and-answer process and generate more valid prevalence estimates of the white-collar crimes ('more-is-better' assumption). Our empirical results show that the CM reduces social desirability bias and elicits more valid self-reports regarding the sensitive behavior compared to standard direct questioning.