Der illegale Verkauf verschreibungspflichtiger Medikamente zur kognitiven Leistungssteigerung – Eine Vignetten-basierte Studie rationaler und normativer Erklärungsgründe

Abstract

The illicit sale of prescription drugs for enhancing cognitive performance is a criminal act which has hardly been studied although the consumption of these drugs by healthy people has numerous negative individual and social consequences. In this study, we scrutinize the decision to sale those drugs based on assumptions of various criminological rational choice models, self-control theory, social norms, as well as the Model of Frame Selection (MFS) and the Situational Action Theory (SAT). Thereby, we also consider interactions between instrumental incentives, self-control and norms. To investigate decisions regarding the illegal sale of performance enhancing drugs, we used a web-based survey among students at four German universities (N=1,698). Each respondent received randomly one out of 900 vignettes, in each case describing a hypothetical sales situation concerning the illegal and financially rewarding transmission of medications to enhance concentration between students. The descriptions have been randomly varied with respect to the sales profits and the severity of punishments and their respective probabilities. Moreover, the degree of self-control and internalized norms regarding illegal sales have been assessed. The results, that are derived from double hurdle models, show that, especially, internalized norms as well as the severity of punishment reduce the willingness of selling, while low self-control and increasing profits increase this willingness. In addition, a negative interaction effect between low self-control and the severity of punishment shows that a more severe punishment leads to more deterrence when self-control is lower (respectively that with more sever punishments, the impact of self-control decreases). Although the results support the theoretical assumptions only partially, we can show that internalized norms significantly influence the perception of criminal behavior while the benefits of such behavior and self-control seem to operate in a downstream deliberation process.