Do moral commitments and religiosity matter for honesty? Experimental evidence on the size of monetary incentives

Abstract This study examines the extent to which the size of monetary incentives in an unobserved setting affects the self-maintenance concept (Mazar, Amir and Ariely, 2008), which suggests that not everyone would cheat to the extent that it compromises how they see themselves. In addition, we also investigate the interplay between moral values, religiosity and dishonesty in the same setting while varying the size of monetary incentives. The current study first assessed participants' moral values and religiosity without being informed of its objectives. The extensively used die-rolling game developed by Fischbacher and Follmi-Heusi (2013) was then conducted to elicit the participants' cheating behavior. Our experimental findings did not provide evidence that moral values and religiosity could contribute to ethical decision-making when individuals were allowed to cheat without the risk of detection. Nevertheless, a substantial decrease in monetary incentives led to significant partial lying and insignificant maximal lying, suggesting that the self-maintenance concept can be reinforced with smaller monetary incentives. From a practical implication standpoint, the government agencies or private companies seeking to reduce cheating behavior should avoid allocating large travel budgets to a small group of unsupervised staffs to deal with clients. Instead, the company should allocate a small travel budget to more sale staffs to deal with the same number of clients. JEL classification code: C93, D63