Victims of Corrupt Practices: Does Crime Seriousness Affect Bribe Payers’ Decision to Report?

Abstract

Despite the considerable amount of literature on self-reported corruption and the salience of anti-corruption narratives among international organizations, little is known about bribe payers’ reporting decisions. Relying on the analysis of a self-report survey among a specific subsample of the victimized population—the university students who were forced to pay a bribe in their interaction with state agencies after extortion in Azerbaijan ( n = 152), this paper attempts to ascertain whether the previously employed crime seriousness construct is relevant in the context of bribery. Results suggest that only 25.7% of bribe payments have been reported to the authorities. As the first study exploring the role of crime seriousness in the context of bribery reporting, we found that neither financial impact nor emotional distress caused by a bribe payment affects reporting behavior. Instead, previous contact with the criminal justice system was the sole predictor of decision-making, indicating for the first time in the literature the applicability of the contact thesis in the context of corruption. The study contributes to victimology as it provides insights into the correlates of decision-making among victims of bribery requests and tests the applicability of crime seriousness in a previously unstudied offence.