Generating Voluntary Compliance Across Doctrines and Nations: Interlocking the Behavioral and Regulatory Aspects of Governments’ Ability to Trust Public' Cooperation, Ethicality and Compliance

Project Information

VCOMP

Grant agreement ID: 101054656

DOI

10.3030/101054656

EC signature date 29 September 2022

Start date 1 November 2022

End date 31 October 2027

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 500 000,00

EU contribution

€ 2 500 000,00

Coordinated by

BAR ILAN UNIVERSITY
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - VCOMP (Generating Voluntary Compliance Across Doctrines and Nations: Interlocking the Behavioral and Regulatory Aspects of Governments’ Ability to Trust Public' Cooperation, Ethicality and Compliance)

Reporting period: 2022-11-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The VCOMP project addresses the need to enhance voluntary compliance (VC) with regulations as a sustainable and effective governance strategy. VC reduces enforcement costs, improves public trust, and fosters cooperation between the state and citizens. Despite these advantages, it remains underutilized due to governments' reliance on coercive measures. This reliance arises from uncertainty about public trustworthiness and doubts about the effectiveness of non-coercive tools, such as incentives and nudges. Consequently, there is a gap in developing adaptive, trust-based regulatory approaches to complement or replace enforcement-heavy methods.
VCOMP aims to bridge this gap by integrating theoretical and empirical insights from behavioral ethics, regulation, and public policy. This interdisciplinary effort seeks to create a comprehensive VC model that considers cross-national and cultural variations, acknowledging the diverse roles of social norms, trust, and regulatory tools. The project examines how these factors interact within regulatory frameworks employing nudges, incentives, and sanctions to foster compliance.
To ensure robustness, VCOMP analyzes data from representative samples in countries with varying trust levels in government, including Denmark, Greece, Israel, and the Netherlands. By investigating the role of trust in shaping compliance behaviors, the project identifies predictors of VC and evaluates interventions in key areas such as taxation, environmental regulation, and public health. These domains, with significant societal and economic impacts, demand tailored regulatory strategies to address compliance challenges effectively.
The VCOMP project aspires to transform regulatory paradigms by promoting trust-based models that reduce enforcement costs and strengthen public trust in governance. Its findings will provide policymakers with actionable strategies to design culturally sensitive, trust-enhancing regulations. By addressing complex societal issues, such as environmental sustainability and public health crises, VCOMP aims to build long-term, sustainable compliance mechanisms for global impact.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Can States Trust the Public: The Promise and Perils of Voluntary Compliance
A cornerstone of the VCOMP project is the book Can States Trust the Public: The Promise and Perils of Voluntary Compliance, which explores the challenges governments face in fostering public cooperation amid declining public trust. It examines why voluntary compliance, despite its benefits, remains underutilized in many regulatory environments. By developing a framework to understand its antecedents, the book evaluates the risks and rewards of various regulatory strategies, advocating for trust-based mechanisms over coercive measures.
Key Findings from VCOMP Studies:
• Industry Self-Regulation: A review of 190 studies found self-regulation effective when supported by transparency, accountability, and stakeholder engagement. However, it often fails without external oversight and enforcement. This highlights the need for hybrid approaches combining self-regulation with formal frameworks.
• Polarization and Compliance: Analysis of ideological polarization revealed that trust and political alignment significantly affect compliance, especially among individuals with extreme views. Using data from the European Social Survey, the study showed, for example, that right-wing individuals demonstrate lower compliance when perceiving regulatory frameworks as biased or politically opposed.
• Tax Compliance: A meta-analysis of 70,000 observations identified a gap between taxpayers' intentions and behaviors, showing that tax morale alone is insufficient for high compliance. The study emphasized enforcement, fairness, and social norms as key drivers, suggesting governments cultivate a tax compliance culture balancing intrinsic motivations and enforcement.
• Cultural Dimensions: Research from 18 countries revealed that factors like political trust, rule of law, and societal norms profoundly shape compliance behavior. These findings stress the need for context-sensitive regulatory strategies aligned with local values and norms to enhance effectiveness.
Together, these insights illustrate the complexity of fostering voluntary compliance. Policymakers are urged to design adaptive regulatory strategies that build trust, integrate cultural considerations, and combine intrinsic and extrinsic motivators to achieve sustainable governance.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

VCOMP has significantly advanced the field by integrating insights from psychology, sociology, economics, and law. This interdisciplinary approach has enabled the development of nuanced regulatory strategies that address the interplay between behavior, norms, cultural values, and technology. These contributions have deepened our understanding of compliance behaviors and provided innovative tools for designing effective regulatory systems.
A major achievement of VCOMP is identifying key predictors of compliance, such as injunctive norms (societal expectations of appropriate behavior), cultural dimensions (trust and values), and institutional trust. By analyzing how these factors shape regulatory outcomes, VCOMP has developed predictive frameworks to guide interventions that encourage voluntary compliance without relying on coercion.
VCOMP’s findings have been applied to high-impact areas like taxation, environmental regulation, and healthcare. The project has demonstrated how aligning extrinsic incentives (e.g. fines or rewards) with intrinsic motivations (e.g. personal values or social norms) enhances compliance. This alignment has proven especially effective in promoting pro-environmental behaviors, fostering sustainable actions through a balance of motivations.
The project has also made strides in leveraging technology to support compliance. Using cutting-edge tools like Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs), VCOMP has analyzed corporate sustainability disclosures, identifying patterns and inconsistencies to inform regulatory improvements. These technological applications enhance corporate compliance with environmental regulations and improve transparency in sustainability efforts.
Additionally, VCOMP has explored cultural influences on compliance, examining how trust in government and societal norms shape regulatory behavior. This research highlights the need for culturally sensitive regulatory approaches tailored to specific contexts, emphasizing that a one-size-fits-all strategy is often ineffective.
Finally, VCOMP introduced a pioneering framework for algorithmic regulation that balances trust, autonomy, and privacy. This ethical framework guides the development of governance systems leveraging AI and machine learning while safeguarding rights and ensuring transparency. By emphasizing fairness, accountability, and ethical considerations, it offers a blueprint for future regulatory innovation.