Abstract:

The study investigates the importance of behavioral aspects for understanding the reason why successful and well-paid employees tend to be corrupted by identifying differences in attitudes towards corruption depending on age, education, occupation and subjective economic status of Russian employees.  The authors use as a ground Descriptive Decision Theory, which characterizes and explains regularities in the choices that people are disposed to make. The research is conducted with 256 respondents working on the territory of the Russian Federation, though not all of them are of Russian origin.  We link the research results to Prospect Theory, notably features such as anchoring, loss aversion and risk seeking. The results of the survey are distinguishing the following groups:  youth and middle aged, employees of private sector and government employees, people with high education and people with scientific degree.  The approach is interdisciplinary and links Russian legal norms, applicable rules and human behavior, convenience, facilitation, and productivity within the corruption context.  This research has adopted mixed-method approaches such as semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and surveys as data collection tools, and it also analyzes data collected by thematic analysis as the main method of ethnographic study. The research being the first of such type with Russian data and with behavioral links, aims at providing guidance for future regulation to reduce the level of corruption.