Reporting Peers' Wrongdoing: Evidence on the Effect of Incentives on Morally Controversial Behavior.

This article examines the impact of monetary rewards on whistleblowing behavior among employees of the Afghan Ministry of Education (MoE), focusing on reporting colleagues' absenteeism. Through a field experiment involving 2,040 civil servants across 151 schools, the study uses a two-by-two design varying financial incentives and the perceived consequentiality of reports—whether reports might lead to penalties or remain purely academic. Findings reveal that monetary rewards increase reporting when denunciations are inconsequential but reduce reporting by 32% when reports could harm colleagues, suggesting a moral aversion to being paid for harming others. The accuracy of reports is not compromised by incentives, and attitudes toward incentivized reporting vary culturally and socially, highlighting the importance of moral norms and whistleblower protections in designing effective peer-reporting policies.