When do severe sanctions enhance compliance? The role of procedural fairness Peter Verboon a,⇑ , Marius van Dijke b a Department of Psychology, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands b Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 19 April 2010 Received in revised form 17 September 2010 Accepted 21 September 2010 Available online 26 September 2010 JEL classification: K30 PsycINFO classification: 2900 Keywords: Sanction severity Procedural fairness Compliance Moral evaluations abstract Building on theoretical notions that severe sanctions (more than mild ones) can communi- cate that sanctioned behavior is morally unacceptable, we argued that particularly author- ities who enact the sanction procedures in a fair manner stimulate compliance with their decisions. This is because such authorities should be considered legitimate to communicate what is morally acceptable and unacceptable. This interactive effect of sanction size and procedural fairness on compliance should thus be mediated by moral evaluations of the authority. A field survey and an experiment revealed support for these predictions. These results thus support a non-instrumental perspective on the effectiveness of sanction sever- ity in increasing compliance with authorities. Ó 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction A common way for authorities to increase compliance with their decisions is by formally sanctioning non-compliance. Research shows that sanction systems can indeed increase compliance with authorities’ decisions (e.g. Eek, Loukopoulos, Fujii, & Gärling, 2002; Fehr & Gächter, 2002; McCusker & Carnevale, 1995; Wit & Wilke, 1990; Yamagishi, 1986) although the effectiveness of such systems is often rather limited (Tyler, 1990; Varma & Doob, 1998). In fact, some studies even report that sanctions can undermine compliance (De Dreu, Giebels, & Van de Vliert, 1998; Fehr & Rockenbach, 2003; Gneezy & Rustichini, 2000; Kirchler, 2007; Mulder, Van Dijk, De Cremer, & Wilke, 2006; Tenbrunsel & Messick, 1999; van Prooijen, Gallucci, & Toeset, 2008). The decision to install sanction systems for norm transgressions is often relatively easy to make for authorities because members of groups, organizations, and societies often agree to a considerable extent about many transgressions that should be sanctioned (Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002; Darley & Pittman, 2003). It is, however, often difficult to establish the appropriate severity of a sanction upon norm transgression because there are often conflicting opinions on this issue. For instance, politically left- versus right-oriented members of societies (and their representative politicians) reliably differ in 0167-4870/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2010.09.007 ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Psychology, Open University, Coolsingel 65, 3012 AC Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 10 2771480. E-mail address: Peter.Verboon@ou.nl (P. Verboon). Journal of Economic Psychology 32 (2011) 120–130 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Economic Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/joep