Detecting Grassroots Bribery and Its Sources in China: A Survey Experimental Approach

Drawing data from a national survey, this study relies on several embedded list experiments to examine the grassroots bribery that the survey respondents tried to hide due to social desirability. The findings from the list experiments are extracted to develop an innovative weighting technique to provide accurate estimations of bribery behavior. It finds that the level of grassroots bribery in public sectors is significantly higher than what people would admit; that the reasons for bribery can be traced to the country’s public service distribution, the low risk of practicing bribery, and the rapid increase in disposable income. These findings suggest that grassroots bribery is still a serious issue in Chinese society, and it creates new challenges for effective governance during the country’s anti-corruption campaign.