Is There an Informative Effect of Law? An Experimental Test
| Author | Francisco J. León,José A. Noguera,Jordi Tena‐Sánchez |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2014.00686.x |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 2014
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 576±603
Is There an Informative Effect of Law?
An Experimental Test
Jose
¨A. Noguera,* Jordi Tena-Sa
¨nchez*, and
Francisco J. Leo
¨n**
Debates on how the law affects citizens' behaviour have traditionally
focused on two mechanisms: deterrence and perceptions of legitimacy.
In recent years, some scholars have suggested that the law may also
affect compliance through expressive mechanisms that reveal informa-
tion about the world (for example, by eliciting the risks associated with
a particular behaviour). Dharmapala and McAdams have called this
the informative effect of law. However, to date very little empirical
evidence of the existence of such an effect has emerged. In this article,
we present the results of an experiment that tests for three different
hypotheses as to how this effect may be produced. Our findings show
that legislators' sincerity or their access to expert knowledge is not
sufficient to produce information effects. Instead, we suggest an
`asymmetry' hypothesis: the fact that a law is passed or rejected has an
asymmetrical information effect on subjects' risk perceptions.
576
*Group of Analytical Sociology and Institutional Design (GSADI),
Department of Sociology, Universitat Auto
Ánoma de Barcelona (UAB),
08193, Cerdanyola del Valle
Ás (Barcelona), Spain
jose.noguera@uab.cat jordi.tena@uab.cat
** Group of Analytical Sociology and Institutional Design (GSADI),
Department of Business (Sociology Unit), Faculty of Economics, Universitat
de Girona (UdG), 1701, Girona, Spain
francisco.leon@udg.edu
We thank the National Plan for R&D and the CONSOLIDER-INGENIO Programme of
the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN, Grants CSO2012-31401 and
CSD2010-00034) for financial support. We are grateful to Netquest S.L.'s CEO, GermaÂn
Loewe, for his help with the experimental design; to Michele Daves at GEMASS-
Sorbonne, who provided helpful comments on the statistical analysis, and to three
anonymous reviewers.
ß2014 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2014 Cardiff University Law School
THE EXPRESSIVE EFFECTS OF LAW
A significant debate in the social sciences concerns the identification of the
mechanisms through which the law affects cit izens' behaviour, and,
specifically, their compliance. The literature in this field presents two basic
approaches: the rational choice theory (or deterrence theory), originally
applied to this field by the work of Gary Becker,
1
assumes that citizens
follow the law because of its sanctioning or deterrent power.
2
According to
deterrence theories, rational individuals are expected to comply with norms
when the expected utility of compliance is higher than that of non-
compliance; therefor e the probability and int ensity of sanctions and
punishments for deviants are key factors in explaining the observed levels
of norm conformity.
Scholars who tend to adopt sociological, psychological, and political
approaches claim that sanctions alone are not sufficient to ensure com-
pliance, and that factors such as social norms, social interactions, ethical
values, perceptions of fairness, knowledge of the legal system, or attitudes
towards government may have a strong influence on compliance with the
law. It has been widely argued, for example, that compliance improves when
citizens regard the law as legitimate and just, and when they feel treated with
dignity and respect by the authorities.
3
However, in recent years several scholars from both traditions have
introduced a novel strand into this debate by claiming that a third factor may
be in place: the expressive effects of law. The basic idea of an expressive
effect is that law may influence citizens' behaviour just by calling their
attention to specific action patterns or giving prominence to some facts. This
577
1 G.S. Becker, `Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach' (1968) 76 J. of
Political Economy 169.
2 D. Baird et al., Game Theory and the Law (1994); J. Coleman, Market, Morals and
the Law (1988); D. Farber and P. Frickey, Law and Public Choice (1991); A.W. Katz,
Foundations of the Economic Approach to Law (1998); R.A. Posner, Economic
Analysis of Law (1998).
3 I. Ayres and J. Braithwaite, Responsive Regulation: Transcending the Deregulation
Debate (1992); J. Braithwaite, Regulatory Capitalism (2008); J. Braithwaite et al.,
Regulating Aged Care. Ritualism and the New Pyramid (2007); J.L. Gibson, `The
Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court in a Polarized Polity' (2007) 4 J. of Empirical
Legal Studies 507; N. Gunningham and P. Grabosky, Smart Regulation. Designing
Environmental Policy (1998); R.H. McAdams and J. Nadler, `Coordinating in the
Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal
Compliance' (2008) 42 Law and Society Rev. 865; K. Murphy, `Regulating More
Effectively: The Relationship Between Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and Tax Non-
compliance' (2005) 32 J. of Law and Society 562; P. Pettit, Republicanism. A Theory
of Freedom and Government (1997); P. Pettit, `Rational Choice Regulation: Two
Strategies' in his Rules, Reasons and Norms: Selected Papers (2002); T.R. Tyler,
Why People Obey the Law (1990); M. Wenzel, `The Impact of Outcome Orientation
and Justice Concerns on Tax Compliance: The Role of Taxpayers' Identity' (2002) 87
J. of Applied Psychology 629.
ß2014 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2014 Cardiff University Law School
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