Watching the embezzler: an experiment on unethical behaviour

Abstract

Embezzlement is a type of unethical behavior that occurs in our daily life. We examine the importance of watching eyes for reducing this type of behavior. We focus on the decision of an intermediary, who gets an amount of money donated by some people to an NGO and decides how much to give to the beneficiaries of that money. We explore how implementing watching eyes can effectively reduce embezzlement. The variable sex is also considered, analyzing the sex of the subject and the interaction between the sex of the decision maker and the sex of the eyes. A laboratory experiment is run, controlling for who is watching you (woman vs. man), and how realistic it feels (static image vs. GIF). Gender differences on embezzlement decisions appear statistically significant. Furthermore, significant differences are found regarding the realism of the tool of watching eyes and the sex of it. Therefore, the type of tool used in order to reduce unethical behavior, the sex of that tool (eyes in this case) as well as the sex and other individual characteristics of the sample population matter. We propose policy makers to consider the tool of watching eyes when defining policy in order to accurately reduce unethical behavior.