Aims & background

The phenomenon of corruption has always been an exciting research challenge, as researching and understanding such a negatively perceived concept and exploring its connections is not an easy task because the preconceptions of research subjects – but even researchers’ bias – can significantly distort data collection, analysis and all aspects of the research process. Despite these challenges, however, there is a growing interest in the topic, as the assessment of our economic performance, the investment environment and other areas of the economy also depends on the level of corruption in the country. The level of corruption can be characterized by several indicators and models, but individual behaviour and perception related to the prevailing phenomenon in a given country provides more insights at both the organizational and individual level.

The research has several goals built on each other:

1. Develop measurement scales to examine perceptions of corruption

2. Identify the individual’s cultural characteristics and determine if they affect his or her perception of corruption

3. Development of a special measurement instrument with which the above measurement scales can be used.

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Key questions

The research project is based on two main research questions, which are as follows.

RQ1:   What is the social sensitivity to corruption and how does national culture influence it?

RQ1.1 subquestion: (Mezo level) How do an individual’s social and economic status and culture affect susceptibility to corruption?

RQ1.2 subquestion: What is the relationship between the acceptance of corruption (low sensitivity), the experience of corruption and corrupt behaviour and how does culture moderate this relationship?

RQ1.3 subquestion: (Macro level) To what extent does a country’s cultural profile project a sensitivity to perceptions of corruption?

RQ2:   Does the perception of an act of corruption depend on the gender of those involved?

RQ2.1 subquestion: Are we more tolerant to women’s corruption or are they more ruthlessly judged by the public?

RQ2.2 subquestion: How do women are judged in corrupt acts change in different cultures?

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Tool and method

An experiment-based research software have been developed to answer the research quastion. This online tool is based on 20 simple situations. In each situation we are able to measure the following variables - due to its hidden aspects: ​

• nature of the advantage promised / obtained in the corruption activity (material, time, influence, annuity)

• generally perceived roughness of corruption activity (mild, medium, rough)

• the scene of corruption (individual level, government level, business level)

• frequency of corruption activity (ad hoc, regular)

• initiator of corruption (initiated by bribed person, initiated by corrupt person)

• gender of those involved in the situation (gender of initiator, sex of actors involved in the corruption situation)

• research subjects should evaluate the situations thus created on 2x2 two scales, which quadruples the information space formed by the above mentioned 7 dimensions:

  • accepting the behaviour of the corrupt person and judging the likelihood that the respondent would act in the same way in a similar situation as the corrupt person

  • accepting the behaviour of the corrupted person and judging the likelihood of the respondent would act in a similar situation in the same way as the corrupted person.

A very unique feature of our tool, that in situtations the gender of the actors are randomly but measureably change, thus we can also measure the effect caused by the gender of the respondants and also of the actors of the situations.