---
_id: '59520'
abstract:
- lang: eng
  text: 'Normative expectations – beliefs about what others perceive as appropriate
    – have been shown to influence behavioural choices across various domains. We
    examine this concept in the context of whistleblowing, where potential whistleblowers
    face two competing norms: promoting fairness by reporting wrongdoing versus maintaining
    loyalty to peers by staying silent. We investigate how normative expectations
    about these two mutually exclusive actions affect reporting decisions. Specifically,
    we test whether providing information on the majority beliefs about either the
    appropriateness of whistleblowing, or of staying silent, or about both behaviours
    together, differentially affects the whistleblowing decision. Using an incentivized
    experiment with UK employees on Prolific, our study yields four key findings:
    First, employees are more likely to report misconduct when they believe that the
    majority considers whistleblowing to be appropriate. Second, they are less likely
    to blow the whistle when they believe staying silent is deemed appropriate. Third,
    this effect prevails for a particularly important subgroup: among employees who
    believe that the majority supports whistleblowing, the reporting probability increases
    substantially when they simultaneously expect that staying silent is deemed inappropriate.
    Fourth, providing information about both normative dimensions combined or only
    about the inappropriateness of staying silent significantly increases whistleblowing
    compared to the (no information) baseline and to information about whistleblowing
    appropriateness alone. These findings demonstrate the importance of normative
    expectations about both behavioural options for accurately predicting whistleblowing
    behaviour, and that social information interventions are most effective when they
    target behaviours where appropriateness beliefs about conflicting options are
    dispersed. '
author:
- first_name: Behnud
  full_name: Mir Djawadi, Behnud
  id: '26032'
  last_name: Mir Djawadi
  orcid: 0000-0002-6271-5912
- first_name: Sabrina
  full_name: Plaß, Sabrina
  id: '34502'
  last_name: Plaß
- first_name: Sabrina
  full_name: Loer, Sabrina
  id: '38794'
  last_name: Loer
citation:
  ama: Mir Djawadi B, Plaß S, Loer S. <i>Multiple Normative Expectations and Interventions
    -Experimental Evidence on Whistleblowing Behaviour</i>.; 2024.
  apa: Mir Djawadi, B., Plaß, S., &#38; Loer, S. (2024). <i>Multiple Normative Expectations
    and Interventions -Experimental Evidence on Whistleblowing Behaviour</i>.
  bibtex: '@book{Mir Djawadi_Plaß_Loer_2024, title={Multiple Normative Expectations
    and Interventions -Experimental Evidence on Whistleblowing Behaviour}, author={Mir
    Djawadi, Behnud and Plaß, Sabrina and Loer, Sabrina}, year={2024} }'
  chicago: Mir Djawadi, Behnud, Sabrina Plaß, and Sabrina Loer. <i>Multiple Normative
    Expectations and Interventions -Experimental Evidence on Whistleblowing Behaviour</i>,
    2024.
  ieee: B. Mir Djawadi, S. Plaß, and S. Loer, <i>Multiple Normative Expectations and
    Interventions -Experimental Evidence on Whistleblowing Behaviour</i>. 2024.
  mla: Mir Djawadi, Behnud, et al. <i>Multiple Normative Expectations and Interventions
    -Experimental Evidence on Whistleblowing Behaviour</i>. 2024.
  short: B. Mir Djawadi, S. Plaß, S. Loer, Multiple Normative Expectations and Interventions
    -Experimental Evidence on Whistleblowing Behaviour, 2024.
date_created: 2025-04-11T14:02:17Z
date_updated: 2025-04-11T19:30:45Z
keyword:
- Whistleblowing
- Normative Expectations
- Social Information Intervention
- Social Norms
- Economic Experiment
language:
- iso: eng
main_file_link:
- open_access: '1'
  url: file:///C:/Users/splass/Downloads/ssrn-5176305.pdf
oa: '1'
status: public
title: Multiple Normative Expectations and Interventions -Experimental Evidence on
  Whistleblowing Behaviour
type: working_paper
user_id: '34502'
year: '2024'
...