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23 - Crowding-Out Effects of Laws, Policies and Incentives on Compliant Behaviour

from Part III - Incentives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2021

By
Christopher P. Reinders Folmer
Edited by
Benjamin van Rooij  and
D. Daniel Sokol
Benjamin van Rooij
Affiliation:
School of Law, University of Amsterdam
D. Daniel Sokol
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Summary

Abstract: Laws, policies, and incentives provide people with extrinsic reasons to engage in desired behaviours. But by doing so, they may attenuate or displace people’s intrinsic reasons for complying. In this chapter, I review theorising and empirical evidence on such crowding-out effects. I outline perspectives from psychology and economics on how laws, policies, and incentives may undermine people’s intrinsic motivation. Moreover, I describe how such insights have been applied to explain why laws, policies, and incentives may fail to increase compliance – or may even undermine it. The chapter then reviews the empirical evidence on these processes in environmental, organisational, and other legal settings. Although it is plausible that laws, policies, and incentives affect intrinsic motivation to comply, I conclude that empirical evidence of these processes is still modest. I end the chapter by outlining some important directions for future research and some (tentative) recommendations for policy.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance , pp. 326 - 340
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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