Beliefs that justify corruption decrease willingness and perceived support to combat it

Abstract

Civic participation is essential to abstain and punish the corrupt people. Experimental studies that show altruistic punishment, paying for those who do not cooperate to be punished, keep offenders cooperating, but in real life they are little penalized, being necessary to identify the factors that diminish that disposition. 622 Mexican citizens were surveyed to analyze the effects of beliefs that justify corruption and perceived support on willingness to act against corruption by sanctioning and abstaining from it. A model of structural equations confirmed negative effects of corruption justification beliefs and positive perceived support effects, in addition to an indirect negative effect of corruption justification beliefs through a negative effect on perceived support, together explaining for 47% of the variance of the willingness to act against corruption in a model that shows indices of adequate goodness of fit.