When is “time’s up”? The influence of severity and costs/benefits on perceptions of whistleblowing

Abstract

Whistleblowing is one mechanism for holding people in power accountable. However, victims and bystanders of malfeasance often do not come forward because they see the wrongdoing as inconsequential, or they perceive the costs of reporting to exceed the benefits. To better understand individuals’ support for the exposure of wrongdoing by whistleblowers in the public sector, we embed several experiments in a nationally representative survey that vary the severity of wrongdoing and the costs and benefits of reporting it. We show that the public is generally supportive of public sector employees exposing wrongdoing. The data also show that the severity of the wrongdoing, as well as the costs and benefits of exposing that wrongdoing, affect the degree to which members of the general public support exposure via whistleblowing. However, support for reporting certain forms of sexual harassment (i.e., a supervisor putting their hands on an employee’s lower back) is relatively lower.

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