Bringing tax avoiders to light : moral framing and shaming in a public goods experiment

With a series of public goods games in a 2x2-design, we analyze two channels that might moderate social dilemmas and increase cooperation without using pecuniary incentives: moral framing and shaming. Cooperation increases when non-contributing to a public good is framed as morally debatable and socially harmful tax avoidance. However, cooperation is only durable when free-riders are "shamed" by disclosing their misdemeanor. We find shaming effects to be strong enough to make appeals to morality redundant for participants' decisions.