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Corruption Experience and Public Perceptions of Anti-corruption Crackdowns: Experimental Evidence from China

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Abstract

Are citizens’ attitudes towards government’s effort to fight corruption primarily shaped by social information (such as public media and political knowledge) or direct personal experience of corruption? Using a list experiment embedded in national survey to measure corruption experience in China, this paper provides a nuanced comparison of these two factors. Compared with social information, the experience of corruption enhances the perceived corruption while reduces the positive evaluation on government’s anti-corruption effort. However, regarding public feedback to anticorruption endeavours, the effect of corruption experience could be mitigated by people’s satisfaction on basic public services provision. The findings suggest that individuals’ evaluation of anti-corruption campaign is very utilitarian. When people obtains better public services from government, they are more likely to enhance positive evaluation of anti-corruption performance.

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Notes

  1. The Chinese Social Survey (CSS) was conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in 2011. For details, refer to http://www.sociology2010.cass.cn/news/708523.htm.

  2. See The Working Reports of the Supreme People’s Court of PRC, 2013–2018.

  3. We use data from the Survey on the Civic Life in Shanghai, which was conducted by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in 2008.

  4. These data can be accessed at http://www.asianbarometer.org/.

  5. Global Corruption Barometer. For the measurement details, see http://www.transparency.org/research/gcb/gcb_2015_16/0/.

  6. Gender was coded as male (1) and female (0). Age was a continuous variable coded from 18 to 70 years. We measured level of education as the reported years of attendance at formal educational institutions. In terms of residential status, respondents who registered as urban households were coded as 1 and those who registered as agricultural households were coded as 0.

  7. We coded CCP members as 1 and those without CCP membership as 0.

  8. For more details, see http://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Room 825, Wenke Building, No.220, Handan Rd, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Hui Li

  2. Department of Political Science at the School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Room 130, Mingzhai Building, No.1 Tsinghua Yuan, Haidian District, Beijing, 100084, China

    Tianguang Meng

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  1. Hui Li
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  2. Tianguang Meng
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Correspondence to Tianguang Meng.

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Li, H., Meng, T. Corruption Experience and Public Perceptions of Anti-corruption Crackdowns: Experimental Evidence from China. J OF CHIN POLIT SCI 25, 431–456 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-020-09672-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-020-09672-w

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