Cheating in the Lab Predicts Fraud in the Field: An Experiment in Public Transportation

Zhixin Dai
Zhixin Dai
[email protected]
China Financial Policy Research Center, School of Finance, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China; and Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE, Ecully F-69130, France
Search for more papers by this author
,
Fabio Galeotti
Fabio Galeotti
[email protected]
Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE, Ecully F-69130, France
Search for more papers by this author
,
Marie Claire Villeval
Corresponding Author
Marie Claire Villeval
[email protected]
Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE, Ecully F-69130, France; IZA, 53113 Bonn, Germany; and Department of Public Finance, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Search for more papers by this author

China Financial Policy Research Center, School of Finance, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China; and Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE, Ecully F-69130, France

Search for more papers by this author

Fabio Galeotti

[email protected]

Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE, Ecully F-69130, France

Search for more papers by this author

Marie Claire Villeval

Corresponding Author

Marie Claire Villeval

[email protected]

Univ Lyon, CNRS, GATE, Ecully F-69130, France; IZA, 53113 Bonn, Germany; and Department of Public Finance, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

Search for more papers by this author

Published Online:10 Jan 2017https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2616

Supplemental Material

mnsc.2016.2616-sm.pdf (3 MB)

mnsc.2016.2616-sm-data.zip (72 KB)

Cited by
- Crime, Punishment, and Expectations
  6 May 2026 | Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2
- Beyond attention: methylphenidate reduces dishonesty in healthy adults
  20 April 2026 | Psychopharmacology, Vol. 87
- Socially irresponsible information reporting behavior during a pandemic: Underlying economic preferences and interventions
  Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 87
- The legacy of institutions: civic capital and corrupt behavior
  30 March 2026 | Theory and Decision, Vol. 34
- Do better managers bribe less? Cross-national and experimental evidence
  25 March 2026 | Business and Politics, Vol. 5–6
- The Unequal Diffusion of Honesty and Dishonesty in Workplace Networks
  Romain Ferrali
  16 July 2025 | Management Science, Vol. 72, No. 3
- Situational Support for Corruption: A Two-Part Field Experiment on Collusive vs. Extortive Bribery
  Christopher Yenkey,
  Brent Simpson,
  Paul Bliese
  12 August 2025 | Organization Science, Vol. 37, No. 1
- The honest (electricity) thief—Experimental evidence on the relationship between electricity theft and social norms
  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 119
- Gender differences in dishonesty when leaders make decisions on behalf of their team
  The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 6
- Comparing econometric and machine learning models to fare evasion prediction
  Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Vol. 34
- Do cynics lie to avoid exploitation, to exploit others, or not at all? A registered report on the relationship between cynicism and dishonesty
  9 August 2025 | European Journal of Personality, Vol. 39, No. 6
- Introduction
- For God, Family, and Country: The Moral Power of Authorities
  29 October 2025 | The World Bank Economic Review, Vol. 113
- Gratitude and Self-Benefiting Obedience: Gratitude Eliciting Dishonest Behavior Out of Obedience
  18 October 2025 | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour
  17 September 2025 | Nature, Vol. 646, No. 8083
- Dark versus light personality types and moral choice
  European Economic Review, Vol. 178
- When Money Can’t Buy Political Love: Lab Experiments on Vote Buying in Ghana and Uganda
  Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 73, No. 4
- Protecting Public Goods or Helping Free Riders? A Real-Life Moral Dilemma in Interethnic and Intraethnic Encounters
  27 June 2025 | Psychological Science, Vol. 36, No. 7
- Compliance and accountability-seeking: Evidence from a field experiment in Argentina
  Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 175
- Determinants of Fare Evasion in Urban Bus Lines: Case Study of a Large Database Considering Spatial Components
  18 June 2025 | Urban Science, Vol. 9, No. 6
- Card or dice? An improved experimental approach to measure dishonesty
  Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 108
- Making a promise increases the moral cost of lying: Evidence from Norway and the United States
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 233
- Honesty and leadership
  The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 3
- Polarization and Voluntary Compliance: The Impact of Ideological Extremity on the Effectiveness of Self‐Regulation
  2 April 2025 | Regulation & Governance, Vol. 27
- Who Cheats? Adolescents’ Background Characteristics and Dishonest Behavior: A Comprehensive Literature Review and Insights From Two Consecutive Surveys
  2 August 2024 | The Journal of Early Adolescence, Vol. 45, No. 4
- Malleability of Preferences for Honesty
  22 May 2024 | The Economic Journal, Vol. 135, No. 667
- Are mandatory oaths effective in groups?
  21 July 2025 | Experimental Economics, Vol. 28, No. 2
- Meritocracy or malfeasance: violations of meritocracy erode civic rule following
  21 February 2025 | Frontiers in Behavioral Economics, Vol. 4
- Power distance and dishonest behavior
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 230
- On Customer (Dis-)Honesty in Unobservable Queues: The Role of Lying Aversion
  Arturo Estrada Rodriguez,
  Rouba Ibrahim,
  Dongyuan Zhan
  24 April 2024 | Management Science, Vol. 71, No. 1
- Moral Accounting and Real Effort: Experimental Evidence 
  1 January 2025 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 21
- Lying in competitive environments: Identifying behavioral impacts
  European Economic Review, Vol. 170
- Institutional quarantine and dishonest behavior
  Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 104
- Toward real-time deterrence against fare evasion risk in public transport
  Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Vol. 27
- L’économie comportementale murmure à l’oreille du juriste
  Revue française d'économie, Vol. Vol. XXXIX, No. 1
- The LYin lying tendency scale: capturing individual differences in selfish, altruistic, and social-acceptance lying tendencies
  20 May 2024 | Current Psychology, Vol. 43, No. 28
- Fare revenue forecast in public transport: A comparative case study
  Research in Transportation Economics, Vol. 105
- Behavioral dishonesty in multiscenes: Associations with trait honesty and neural patterns during (dis)honesty video‐watching
  10 June 2024 | Human Brain Mapping, Vol. 45, No. 8
- Communication increases collaborative corruption
  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 112
- Inequality shapes the propagation of unethical behaviours: Cheating responses to tax evasion along the income distribution
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 220
- The effect of observing multiple private information outcomes on the inclination to cheat
  26 December 2023 | Economic Inquiry, Vol. 62, No. 2
- Honesty is predicted by moral values and economic incentives but is unaffected by acute stress
  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Vol. 41
- It's time to cheat!
  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 108
- Corrupted by Algorithms? How AI-generated and Human-written Advice Shape (Dis)honesty
  11 September 2023 | The Economic Journal, Vol. 134, No. 658
- All by myself? Testing descriptive social norm-nudges to increase flood preparedness among homeowners
  3 May 2021 | Behavioural Public Policy, Vol. 8, No. 1
- Time in Office and the Changing Gender Gap in Dishonesty: Evidence from Local Politics in India
  22 August 2022 | American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 68, No. 1
- Dishonest collaboration in an intergroup context
  21 August 2023 | British Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 63, No. 1
- Cheating amongst youth offenders: How peers and their social status influence cheating
  3 July 2023 | Economic Inquiry, Vol. 62, No. 1
- I Own, so I do Not Cheat: How Psychological Ownership Reduces Unethical Behavior
  1 January 2024 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 36
- Honesty of Groups: Effects of Size and Gender Composition
  1 January 2024 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 87
- Polarization and Voluntary Compliance The Impact of Ideological Extremity on The Effectiveness of Self-Regulation
  1 January 2024 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 27
- Proud to Belong: The Impact of Ethics Training on Police Officers in Ghana
  1 January 2024 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 113
- Assessing Dishonesty in Cocoa Value Chains: Lab-in-The-Field Evidence from Middlemen in Côte D'Ivoire
  1 January 2024 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 87
- Consumer Dishonesty in Sharing Economy: Evidence from the Bike-Sharing Industry
  1 January 2024 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 113
- Accountability and taxation: Experimental evidence
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 216
- The effect of losing and winning on cheating and effort in repeated competitions
  Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 98
- Fare evasion in public transport: How does it affect the optimal design and pricing?
  Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 176
- Ovulatory shift, hormonal changes, and no effects on incentivized decision-making
  Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 98
- On social norms and observability in (dis)honest behavior
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 212
- Unraveling controversies over civic honesty measurement: An extended field replication in China
  10 July 2023 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 120, No. 29
- Loss aversion in social image concerns
  14 March 2025 | Experimental Economics, Vol. 26, No. 3
- Abrupt academic dishonesty: Pressure, opportunity, and deterrence
  The International Journal of Management Education, Vol. 21, No. 2
- Evaluating fare evasion risk in bus transit networks
  Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Vol. 20
- Honest Behavior: Truth-Seeking, Belief-Speaking, and Fostering Understanding of the Truth in Others
  Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 17, No. 2
- People imitate others' dishonesty but do not intentionally search information about it
  28 July 2022 | Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Vol. 36, No. 2
- Segmenting fare-evaders by tandem clustering and logistic regression models
  8 April 2022 | Public Transport, Vol. 15, No. 1
- Tax compliance after an audit: Higher or lower?
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 207
- Honesty nudges: Effect varies with content but not with timing
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 207
- Measuring corruption in the field using behavioral games
  Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 218
- Fare Evasion in Public Transport: How Does it Affect the Optimal Design and Pricing?
  1 January 2023 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 21
- Dirty Money. The Impact of Negative ESG News Sentiment on Dividend Consumption
  1 January 2023 | SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 26
- The cost of honesty: Field evidence
  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 101
- Taking the chance!–Interindividual differences in rule-breaking
  7 October 2022 | PLOS ONE, Vol. 17, No. 10
- Team-based incentives in transportation firms: An experiment
  Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Vol. 164
- The Effects of Income Windfalls on Labor Supply and Tax Compliance: Experimental Evidence
  26 September 2022 | Review of Behavioral Economics, Vol. 9, No. 3
- Social norms and dishonesty across societies
  28 July 2022 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 119, No. 31
- On the persistence of dishonesty
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 200
- Individual cheating in the lab: a new measure and external validity
  8 September 2021 | Theory and Decision, Vol. 93, No. 1
- Do restaurant customers who receive an unreasonably low bill bring it to the server’s attention? A field experiment on dishonesty
  Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 90
- Measuring honesty and explaining adulteration in naturally occurring markets
  Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 156
- To Steal or Not to Steal: Self-Discrepancies as a Way to Promote Pro-social Behavior: The Moderating Role of Self-Interest
  27 April 2022 | Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 13
- Assessing the Intention to Evade Fares for Demographic Segments of Passengers: Empirical Research in Italy for Building Smart(er) Cities
  Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Vol. 148, No. 1
- Honesty in the Digital Age
  Alain Cohn,
  Tobias Gesche,
  Michel André Maréchal
  8 November 2021 | Management Science, Vol. 68, No. 2
- Inequitable wages and tax evasion
  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 96
- Individual Misreporting in a Pandemic and Interventions: A Lab-Field Investigation
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 87
- The Effect of Losing and Winning on Cheating and Effort in Repeated Competitions
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 87
- Lying in Competitive Environments: A Clean Identification of Behavioral Impacts
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 87
- Ranking the Stars in Employee Giving Programs: When Does Donation Engagement Spill Over to Subsequent Ethics?
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 60
- Stopping the Rot I: A Review of Models and Experimental Methods of Corruption Experiments
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 111
- Pecunia non olet: on the self-selection into (dis)honest earning opportunities
  14 March 2025 | Experimental Economics, Vol. 24, No. 4
- State lottery in the lab: an experiment in external validity
  14 March 2025 | Experimental Economics, Vol. 24, No. 4
- Gender differences in the stability of risk attitudes
  25 October 2021 | Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Vol. 63, No. 2
- Crafting messages to fight dishonesty: A field investigation of the effects of social norms and watching eye cues on fare evasion
  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 166
- The opportunities and challenges of behavioral field research on misconduct
  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 166
- Can We Commit Future Managers to Honesty?
  13 August 2021 | Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 12
- When leading by example leads to less corrupt collaboration
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 188
- Fraud Deterrence Institutions Reduce Intrinsic Honesty
  11 March 2021 | The Economic Journal, Vol. 131, No. 638
- A qualitative study of perception of a dishonesty experiment
  2 June 2021 | Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 28, No. 3
- A side effect of a broker's expertise in clientelism: A lab‐experimental study
  13 July 2020 | Bulletin of Economic Research, Vol. 73, No. 3
- Bad machines corrupt good morals
  3 June 2021 | Nature Human Behaviour, Vol. 5, No. 6
- Behavior in cheating paradigms is linked to overall approval rates of crowdworkers
  16 July 2020 | Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Vol. 34, No. 2
- Keeping them honest: Promises reduce cheating in adolescents
  23 July 2020 | Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Vol. 34, No. 2
- Big and small lies
  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 91
- Committed to Reciprocate on a Bribe or Blow the Whistle: The Effects of Periodical Staff-Rotation in Public Administration
  9 September 2020 | Public Performance & Management Review, Vol. 44, No. 2
- Rule Following Mitigates Collaborative Cheating and Facilitates the Spreading of Honesty Within Groups
  17 June 2020 | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 47, No. 3
- Economic preferences and compliance in the social stress test of the COVID-19 crisis
  Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 194
- Social status and social learning
  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 90
- Further from the truth: The impact of moving from in-person to online settings on dishonest behavior
  Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 90
- Monetary Incentives and the Contagion of Unethical Behavior
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 87
- Tax Enforcement in the Black Economy
- Fare evasion correction for smartcard-based origin-destination matrices
  Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Vol. 141
- Coins Are Cold and Cards Are Caring: The Effect of Pregiving Incentives on Charity Perceptions, Relationship Norms, and Donation Behavior
  25 June 2020 | Journal of Marketing, Vol. 84, No. 6
- Similarity increases collaborative cheating
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 178
- Eliciting preferences for truth-telling in a survey of politicians
  24 August 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 117, No. 36
- Cheating in university exams: the relevance of social factors
  2 January 2020 | International Review of Economics, Vol. 67, No. 3
- Do students, workers, and unemployed passengers respond differently to the intention to evade fares? An empirical research
  Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Vol. 7
- An evolutionary approach to fraud management
  European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 284, No. 3
- Decision Support System for Public Transportation Selection
  IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, Vol. 879, No. 1
- Do negative economic shocks affect cognitive function, adherence to social norms and loss aversion?
  17 January 2025 | Journal of the Economic Science Association, Vol. 6, No. 1
- External validity of a laboratory measure of cheating: Evidence from Czech juvenile detention centers
  Economics Letters, Vol. 191
- Replication: Cheating, loss aversion, and moral attitudes in Vietnam
  Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 78
- Can Shorter Transfer Chains and Transparency Reduce Embezzlement?
  28 May 2020 | Review of Behavioral Economics, Vol. 7, No. 2
- Regional Differences and Firms’ Innovation Self-Choice Behavior: Insights from China
  9 May 2020 | Sustainability, Vol. 12, No. 9
- Partisan culture, identity and corruption: An experiment based on the Chinese Communist Party
  China Economic Review, Vol. 60
- The Effect of Leadership on Free-Riding: Results from a Public-Good Experiment
  25 March 2020 | Review of Behavioral Economics, Vol. 7, No. 1
- Fare evasion in public transport systems: a review of the literature
  14 February 2020 | Public Transport, Vol. 12, No. 1
- Prosocial Compliance in P2P Lending: A Natural Field Experiment
  Ninghua Du,
  Lingfang Li,
  Tian Lu,
  Xianghua Lu
  10 June 2019 | Management Science, Vol. 66, No. 1
- Antisocial Behavior in the Workplace
  1 March 2020
- The Formation and Malleability of Preferences and Noncognitive Skills
  26 June 2020
- Students Cheat More: Comparing the Dishonesty of a Student Sample and a Representative Sample in the Laboratory*
  3 July 2019 | The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Vol. 122, No. 1
- Economic Preferences and Compliance in the Social Stress Test of the Corona Crisis
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 126
- Corruption and Within-Country Stereotypes
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 12
- Selection into Leadership and Dishonest Behavior of Leaders: A Gender Experiment
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 87
- Inequitable Wages and Tax Evasion
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 134
- What Makes a Tax Evader?
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 1
- Comportements (non) éthiques et stratégies morales
  Revue économique, Vol. Vol. 70, No. 6
- Revisiting REVISE: (Re)Testing unique and combined effects of REminding, VIsibility, and SElf-engagement manipulations on cheating behavior
  Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 75
- Heterogeneity in banker culture and its influence on dishonesty
  13 November 2019 | Nature, Vol. 575, No. 7782
- Truth-telling and the regulator. Experimental evidence from commercial fishermen
  European Economic Review, Vol. 120
- Embezzlement and guilt aversion
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 167
- Are Corporate Social Responsibility Courses Effective? A Longitudinal and Gender-Based Analysis in Undergraduate Students
  30 October 2019 | Sustainability, Vol. 11, No. 21
- Behavioral Dishonesty in the Public Sector
  8 October 2018 | Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 29, No. 4
- Ride Your Luck! A Field Experiment on Lottery-Based Incentives for Compliance
  Marco Fabbri,
  Paolo Nicola Barbieri,
  Maria Bigoni
  8 May 2019 | Management Science, Vol. 65, No. 9
- The impact of two different economic systems on dishonesty
  European Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 59
- The effects of scarcity on cheating and in-group favoritism
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 165
- Large-scale cooperation driven by reputation, not fear of divine punishment
  21 August 2019 | Royal Society Open Science, Vol. 6, No. 8
- Financial temptation increases civic honesty
  Science, Vol. 365, No. 6448
- THE IMPACT OF PEER PRESENCE ON CHEATING
  22 January 2019 | Economic Inquiry, Vol. 57, No. 2
- Dishonesty in health care practice: A behavioral experiment on upcoding in neonatology
  13 December 2018 | Health Economics, Vol. 28, No. 3
- Taking shortcuts: Cognitive conflict during motivated rule-breaking
  Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 71
- Loss aversion and lying behavior
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 158
- Fare-dodging in the lab and the moral cost of dishonesty
- Group Monitoring, Endogenous Crackdown and Anti-corruption: An Experiment
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 20
- Bad Losers? Bad Winners? The (Adverse) Consequences of Competing Against Peers
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 87
- Preferences for Truth‐Telling
  1 January 2019 | Econometrica, Vol. 87, No. 4
- Ethical Free Riding: When Honest People Find Dishonest Partners
  16 October 2018 | Psychological Science, Vol. 29, No. 12
- Laboratory Measure of Cheating Predicts School Misconduct
  25 March 2018 | The Economic Journal, Vol. 128, No. 615
- Predictors of Bribe-Taking: The Role of Bribe Size and Personality
  10 September 2018 | Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 9
- Identifying voter preferences: The trade-off between honesty and competence
  European Economic Review, Vol. 105
- Honesty in the Digital Age
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 113
- Dishonesty in Healthcare Practice: A Behavioral Experiment on Upcoding in Neonatology
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 113
- Who is Cheating? The Role of Attendants, Risk Aversion, and Affluence
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 113
- Stable Preferences or Moral Accounting?
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 3
- A Perspective on Research on Dishonesty: Limited External Validity Due to the Lack of Possibility of Self-Selection in Experimental Designs
  12 September 2017 | Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 8
- Aiming to Choose Correctly or to Choose Wisely? The Optimality-Accuracy Trade-Off in Decisions Under Uncertainty
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 77
- Gender Differences in Compliance: The Role of Social Value Orientation
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 7
- Laboratory Measure of Cheating Predicts Misbehavior at School
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 113

Volume 64, Issue 3

March 2018

Pages v, 983-1476

Article Information

Supplemental Material

Metrics

Information

Received:February 18, 2016
Accepted:July 14, 2016
Published Online:January 10, 2017

Cite as

Zhixin Dai, Fabio Galeotti, Marie Claire Villeval (2017) Cheating in the Lab Predicts Fraud in the Field: An Experiment in Public Transportation. Management Science 64(3):1081-1100.

https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2616

Keywords

PDF download

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Cheating in the Lab Predicts Fraud in the Field: An Experiment in Public Transportation

Supplemental Material

Volume 64, Issue 3

Article Information

Supplemental Material

Metrics

Information

Cite as

Keywords

Sign Up for INFORMS Publications Updates and News