IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-02448914.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is a 'bad individual' more condemnable than several 'bad individuals'? Examining the scope-severity paradox

Author

Listed:
  • Gilles Grolleau

    (CEREN - Centre de Recherche sur l'ENtreprise [Dijon] - BSB - Burgundy School of Business (BSB) - Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Dijon Bourgogne (ESC), CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - FRE2010 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier)

  • Lisette Ibanez

    (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement)

  • Naoufel Mzoughi

    (ECODEVELOPPEMENT - Ecodéveloppement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

Previous literature found empirical evidence to the scope-severity paradox (SSP), corresponding to situations where the perceived harm of a wrongdoing or crime decreases with the number of victims. We examine this phenomenon for the perpetrators' side. Using a survey experiment, we examine whether increasing the number of perpetrators of a crime, namely a fraud, decreases its perceived severity (and subsequent punishment) at the individual level. Two scenarios are examined corresponding to two kinds of fraud: a fraud committed by a financial adviser against his/her own employer (scenario 1) and a tax evasion by an executive (scenario 2). Overall, our results do not offer a clear-cut support for the scope-severity paradox for the perpetrators' side, even if some secondary results can be indicative of a possible SSP in some circumstances. More precisely, in the case of a financial fraud, the stated severity increases when the number of perpetrators is low. We discuss the implications of our results and raise important issues for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilles Grolleau & Lisette Ibanez & Naoufel Mzoughi, 2020. "Is a 'bad individual' more condemnable than several 'bad individuals'? Examining the scope-severity paradox," Post-Print hal-02448914, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02448914
    DOI: 10.1515/rle-2019-0017
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.umontpellier.fr/hal-02448914
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.umontpellier.fr/hal-02448914/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/rle-2019-0017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John A. List & Azeem M. Shaikh & Yang Xu, 2019. "Multiple hypothesis testing in experimental economics," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(4), pages 773-793, December.
    2. Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette & Mzoughi, Naoufel, 2020. "Moral judgment of environmental harm caused by a single versus multiple wrongdoers: A survey experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    3. Camerer, Colin F & Hogarth, Robin M, 1999. "The Effects of Financial Incentives in Experiments: A Review and Capital-Labor-Production Framework," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 19(1-3), pages 7-42, December.
    4. Farrow, Katherine & Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette, 2017. "Social Norms and Pro-environmental Behavior: A Review of the Evidence," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 1-13.
    5. Amemiya, Takeshi, 1974. "Multivariate Regression and Simultaneous Equation Models when the Dependent Variables Are Truncated Normal," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 42(6), pages 999-1012, November.
    6. Daniel Read, 2005. "Monetary incentives, what are they good for?," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 265-276.
    7. Bruno S. Frey & Iris Bohnet, 1999. "Social Distance and Other-Regarding Behavior in Dictator Games: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 335-339, March.
    8. Akay, Alpaslan & Martinsson, Peter & Medhin, Haileselassie, 2012. "Does Positional Concern Matter in Poor Societies? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 428-435.
    9. Small, Deborah A. & Loewenstein, George & Slovic, Paul, 2007. "Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 143-153, March.
    10. Weber, James, 1992. "Scenarios in Business Ethics Research: Review, Critical Assessment, and Recommendations," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 137-160, April.
    11. Graf, Lorenz & König, Andreas & Enders, Albrecht & Hungenberg, Harald, 2012. "Debiasing competitive irrationality: How managers can be prevented from trading off absolute for relative profit," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 386-403.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grolleau, Gilles & Mungan, Murat C. & Mzoughi, Naoufel, 2022. "Seemingly irrelevant information? The impact of legal team size on third party perceptions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette & Mzoughi, Naoufel, 2020. "Moral judgment of environmental harm caused by a single versus multiple wrongdoers: A survey experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    2. Sophie Massin & Antoine Nebout & Bruno Ventelou, 2018. "Predicting medical practices using various risk attitude measures," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(6), pages 843-860, July.
    3. Cloos, Janis & Greiff, Matthias & Rusch, Hannes, 2020. "Geographical Concentration and Editorial Favoritism within the Field of Laboratory Experimental Economics (RM/19/029-revised-)," Research Memorandum 014, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    4. El Harbi, Sana & Bekir, Insaf & Grolleau, Gilles & Sutan, Angela, 2015. "Efficiency, equality, positionality: What do people maximize? Experimental vs. hypothetical evidence from Tunisia," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 77-84.
    5. Lisette Ibanez & Sébastien Roussel, 2022. "The impact of nature video exposure on pro-environmental behavior: An experimental investigation," Post-Print hal-03847453, HAL.
    6. Charness, Gary & Le Bihan, Yves & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2024. "Mindfulness training, cognitive performance and stress reduction," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 207-226.
    7. Zhang, Zhe & Zhang, Xu & Putterman, Louis, 2019. "Trust and cooperation at a confluence of worlds: An experiment in Xinjiang, China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 128-144.
    8. Prissé, Benjamin & Jorrat, Diego, 2022. "Lab vs online experiments: No differences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    9. Clot, Sophie & Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette, 2022. "A reference point bias in judging cheaters," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    10. Nathalie Etchart-Vincent & Olivier l’Haridon, 2011. "Monetary incentives in the loss domain and behavior toward risk: An experimental comparison of three reward schemes including real losses," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 61-83, February.
    11. Li-Wei Chao & Helena Szrek & Nuno Sousa Pereira & Mark V. Pauly, 2007. "Time Preference and Its Relationship with Age, Health, and Survival Probability," CEF.UP Working Papers 0706, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    12. Dib-Slamani, Hind & Grolleau, Gilles & Mzoughi, Naoufel, 2022. "Robbing a robber is not robbing," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 1-7.
    13. Joana Pais & Ágnes Pintér & Róbert F. Veszteg, 2020. "Decentralized matching markets with(out) frictions: a laboratory experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(1), pages 212-239, March.
    14. Hanna Fromell & Daniele Nosenzo & Trudy Owens, 2020. "Altruism, fast and slow? Evidence from a meta-analysis and a new experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(4), pages 979-1001, December.
    15. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2006. "Two-stage Boundedly Rational Choice Procedures: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Papers 561, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    16. Florian Artinger & Filippos Exadaktylos & Hannes Koppel & Lauri Sääksvuori, 2010. "Applying Quadratic Scoring Rule transparently in multiple choice settings: A note," ThE Papers 10/01, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    17. Antonio M. Espin & Francisco Reyes-Pereira & Luis F. Ciria, 2017. "Organizations should know their people: A behavioral economics approach," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 1(S), pages 41-48, November.
    18. Alessandra Cillo & Marco Bonetti & Giovanni Burro & Clelia Di Serio & Roberta De Filippis & Riccardo Maria Martoni, 2019. "Neurocognitive assessment in obsessive compulsive disorder patients: Adherence to behavioral decision models," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-16, February.
    19. Cloos, Janis & Greiff, Matthias & Rusch, Hannes, 2019. "Geographical Concentration and Editorial Favoritism within the Field of Laboratory Experimental Economics," Research Memorandum 029, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    20. Etchart-Vincent, Nathalie, 2007. "Expérimentation de laboratoire et économie : contre quelques idées reçues et faux problèmes," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 83(1), pages 91-116, mars.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    crime; identifiability bias; punishment; scope-severity paradox; wrongdoing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02448914. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.