Informal or Formal? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of China’s Two-Tiered Sanctions Policy

Qualitative comparative institutional analysis of environmental governance: Implications from research on payments for ecosystem services

Entrusting the power to punish to a central authority is a hallmark of civilization. We study a collective action dilemma in which self-interest should produce a sub-optimal outcome absent sanctions for non-cooperation. We then test experimentally whether subjects make the theoretically optimal choice of a formal sanction scheme that costs less than the surplus it makes possible, or instead opt for the use of informal sanctions or no sanctions. Most groups adopt formal sanctions when they are of deterrent magnitude and cost a small fraction (10%) of the potential surplus. Contrary to the standard theoretical prediction, however, most groups choose informal sanctions when formal sanctions are more costly (40% of the surplus). Being adopted by voting appears to enhance the efficiency of both informal sanctions and non-deterrent formal sanctions.

Entrusting the power to punish to a central authority is a hallmark of civilization. We study a collective action dilemma in which self‐interest should produce a sub‐optimal outcome absent sanctions for non‐cooperation. We then test experimentally whether subjects make the theoretically optimal choice of a formal sanction scheme that costs less than the surplus it makes possible, or instead opt for the use of informal sanctions or no sanctions. Most groups adopt formal sanctions when they are of deterrent magnitude and cost a small fraction (10%) of the potential surplus. Contrary to the standard theoretical prediction, however, most groups choose informal sanctions when formal sanctions are more costly (40% of the surplus). Being adopted by voting appears to enhance the efficiency of both informal sanctions and non‐deterrent formal sanctions.

Entrusting the power to punish to a central authority is a hallmark of civilization, yet informal or horizontal sanctions have attracted more attention of late. We study experimentally a collective action dilemma and test whether subjects choose a formal sanction scheme that costs less than the surplus it makes possible, as predicted by standard economic theory, or instead opt for the use of informal sanctions (IS) or no sanctions. Our subjects choose, and succeed in using, IS surprisingly often, their voting decisions being responsive to the cost of formal sanctions. Adoption by voting enhances the efficiency of both IS and non-deterrent formal sanctions. Results are qualitatively confirmed under several permutations of the experimental design.

Marijuana policy is changing rapidly in the United States, with medicinal and recreational marijuana increasingly becoming legalized. While marijuana is still illegal for adolescent use, there are concerns that legalization for adults may increase opportunities, and changing attitudes may reduce formal and informal sanctions. This study used four years of cross-sectional data from the Arizona Youth Survey, which is a school-based sample of Arizona youth. The research questions examined opportunity, deterrence, and adolescent marijuana use during a period of changing legal status. Opportunity was a salient predictor for marijuana use in each year examined. While informal sanctions in the form of parental disapproval was a strong predictor of marijuana use, formal sanctions and informal sanctions focused on public perceptions were less important. These findings suggest programming aimed at reducing adolescent marijuana use should focus on reducing opportunities and involve parents.

Although misdemeanors make up the bulk of criminal cases in the United States, the majority of research on court decision‐making examines felony sentencing. In contrast to felony courts, lower‐level courts are characterized by higher case volumes and increased reliance on informal sanctions, which may contribute to greater racial–ethnic disparities. To assess this possibility, we examine pretrial detention and case processing outcomes for misdemeanants in Miami‐Dade County, Florida. Utilizing temporal (detention time) and monetary (bond amount) measures of pretrial detention, we assess whether and to what extent there are racial–ethnic disparities in formal and informal sanctions facing misdemeanants. Results indicate that black defendants, especially black Latinx defendants, face greater informal sanctions (longer detention and higher bond amounts), are more likely to be convicted, and experience more severe formal sanctions than do white non‐Latinx defendants. These findings complicate Feeley's (1979) argument about lower‐level cases, revealing that black defendants are punished by both the court process and formal sanctions. In this way, “the process is the punishment” for lower‐level white and nonwhite defendants, while the punishment is also the punishment for black defendants.

What role do contracts play in long-term relationships? Very little, if any, according to the relational contract literature. It is not the contract that induces promise-keeping but the imposition of (or threat of imposing) relational or informal sanctions, such as suspension or termination of trade. Yet, in reality, parties in long-term relationships write elaborate contracts enforceable through litigation (often with vague, open-ended clauses such as “best efforts”) or set up dispute resolution mechanisms that mimic formal adjudication process. Why go through all that trouble if formal mechanisms are to be used rarely? This paper attempts to answer these questions. The paper argues that formal sanctions have two important advantages that informal sanctions often lack. First, with formal sanctions, parties can design the remedy (e.g., liquidated damages) and even the adjudication process (e.g., arbitration), and such flexibility allows them to decouple the deterrence benefit of the sanction from the cost of its imposition in achieving a better deterrence cost-benefit ratio. With relational sanctions, by contrast, both the deterrence benefit and the imposition cost are largely dictated by the value of future relationship: the more valuable the future relationship, the larger the deterrence benefit from threatening to terminate it, but also the larger the cost of carrying out that threat. Second, the formal adjudication process often uncovers evidence that parties and other market actors can use to better tailor relational sanctions. In fact, the desire to generate more accurate information can explain why contracting parties use vague, open-ended standards, such as “best efforts.” Recognizing these benefits but wary of inducing too much litigation, the most effective means for deterring breach of contract will often combine relational and legal sanctions, an approach commonly observed in the real-world. The paper also shows how various empirical findings are consistent with the theoretical predictions and how the findings can inform courts in interpreting “good faith” obligations.

The threat of formal sanctions is the criminal justice system’s primary tool to discourage online and offline deviant behavior. Yet, scholars have expressed strong concerns about the effectiveness of formal sanctions to deter cybercrime. Even more surprising is the sparsity of deterrence research in the cybercrime literature. This study examined the effects of perceived formal and informal sanctions on digital piracy, computer hacking, and online harassment in a large American college sample. Perceived formal sanctions was negatively correlated with software piracy, media piracy, password cracking, accessing accounts, sending mean messages privately online, and posting mean messages. Higher levels of perceived formal sanctions did not significantly predict any form of cybercrime, however, when controlling for informal sanctions and deviant peer associations. The implications of the findings for our ability to deter deviant behavior in cyberspace are explored.

This study leverages the transactional theory of stress to examine the social transmission of cyberloafing within the workplace, specifically in the context of five-star luxury hotels in Egypt. A key focus is placed on how coworkers’ cyberloafing behaviors influence employees’ own cyberloafing, mediated by perceptions of formal and informal sanction certainty. Unlike prior studies that have primarily explored cyberloafing as an individual act, this research introduces a novel perspective by investigating it as a socially influenced behavior, highlighting the interplay between coworker behaviors, sanction perceptions, and employee responses. The luxury hospitality sector in Egypt offers a unique and significant context, as it combines a high-pressure work environment with the widespread adoption of advanced technologies, creating both opportunities and challenges for managing employee behavior. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), data from 525 employees reveal that coworkers’ cyberloafing positively affects employees’ cyberloafing and diminishes their perceived certainty of both formal and informal sanctions. Formal sanctions refer to official organizational rules, policies, or penalties, while informal sanctions involve peer pressure, social norms, and unwritten expectations within the workplace. The study finds that as employees observe more cyberloafing behaviors among their coworkers, their perception of the certainty of formal sanctions (e.g., fines or disciplinary actions) decreases, which in turn reduces the certainty of informal sanctions (e.g., peer disapproval or social ostracism). This sequential decrease in the certainty of both types of sanctions encourages employees to engage in cyberloafing. The study uncovers the cascading effects of coworker behaviors and the relationship between formal and informal sanctions in influencing cyberloafing.

Using a combination of hypothetical scenarios and survey-type questions, this study investigates the effect of the context of the offense, formal sanctions, informal sanctions, and moral beliefs on self-reported projections to commit sexual assault. Male college students read and responded to five scenarios each describing a hypothetical sexual assault by a male. Respondents were asked to estimate the certainty of formal and informal punishment for the scenario male, the extent to which they believed the male's actions were morally wrong, and the likelihood that they would do what the male did under the same circumstances. We found that projections to commit sexual assault were affected by two circumstances of the incident, the likelihood that the male would be formally sanctioned (dismissed from the university or arrested) and the respondent's moral beliefs. The significant deterrent effect observed for formal sanction threats was not invariant, however. The fear of formal sanctions had no effect when respondents were inhibited by their moral evaluation of the incident. The deterrent effect of formal sanction threats did not vary by the level of social censure for the scenario male's actions. The implications of these finding for previous and subsequent deterrence research are discussed.

Research misconduct is harmful because it threatens public health and public safety, and also undermines public confidence in science. Efforts to eradicate ongoing and prevent future misconduct are numerous and varied, yet the question of “what works” remains largely unanswered. To shed light on this issue, this study used data from both mail and online surveys administered to a stratified random sample of tenured and tenure-track faculty members (N = 613) in the social, natural, and applied sciences at America’s top 100 research universities. Participants were asked to gauge the effectiveness of various intervention strategies: formal sanctions (professional and legal), informal sanctions (peers), prevention efforts (ethics and professional training), and reducing the pressures associated with working in research-intensive units. Results indicated that (1) formal sanctions received the highest level of support, (2) female scholars and researchers working in the applied sciences favored formal sanctions, and (3) a nontrivial portion of the sample supported an integrated approach that combined elements of different strategies. A key takeaway for university administrators is that a multifaceted approach to dealing with the problem of research misconduct, which prominently features enhanced formal sanctions, will be met with the support of university faculty.

In educational policy research, linking specific practices to specific outcomes is an important (though not the only) goal, which can bias researchers (and funders) toward employing purely quantitative methods. Given the context-specific nature of policy implementation in education, however, we argue that understanding how specific practices lead to specific outcomes in specific conditions or contexts is critical to improving education. Qualitative comparative analysis is a method of qualitative research that we argue can help to answer these kinds of questions in studies of educational policies and reforms. Qualitative comparative analysis is a case-oriented research method designed to identify causal relationships between variables and a particular outcome. Distinct from quantitative causal methods, qualitative comparative analysis requires qualitative data to identify conditions (and combinations of conditions) that lead to a particular result; it is context driven, just as many educational reforms must necessarily be. We contend that qualitative comparative analysis has the potential to be of use to educational researchers in investigating complex problems of cause and effect using qualitative data. As such, our aim here is to provide a general overview of the characteristics, processes, and outcomes of qualitative comparative analysis. In so doing, we hope to offer guidance to educational researchers around how and when to use qualitative comparative analysis, as well as recommendations for current educational issues that could be investigated with qualitative comparative analysis.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method, developed by the American social scientist Charles C. Ragin since the 1980s, which has had since then great and ever-increasing success in research applications in various political science subdisciplines and teaching programs. It counts as a broadly recognized addition to the methodological spectrum of political science. QCA is based on set theory. Set theory models “if … then” hypotheses in a way that they can be interpreted as sufficient or necessary conditions. QCA differentiates between crisp sets in which cases can only be full members or not, while fuzzy sets allow for degrees of membership. With fuzzy sets it is, for example, possible to distinguish highly developed democracies from less developed democracies that, nevertheless, are rather democracies than not. This means that fuzzy sets account for differences in degree without giving up the differences in kind. In the end, QCA produces configurational statements that acknowledge that conditions usually appear in conjunction and that there can be more than one conjunction that implies an outcome (equifinality). There is a strong emphasis on a case-oriented perspective. QCA is usually (but not exclusively) applied in y-centered research designs. A standardized algorithm has been developed and implemented in various software packages that takes into account the complexity of the social world surrounding us, also acknowledging the fact that not every theoretically possible variation of explanatory factors also exists empirically. Parameters of fit, such as consistency and coverage, help to evaluate how well the chosen explanatory factors account for the outcome to be explained. There is also a range of graphical tools that help to illustrate the results of a QCA. Set theory goes well beyond an application in QCA, but QCA is certainly its most prominent variant. There is a very lively QCA community that currently deals with the following aspects: the establishment of a code of standards for QCA applications; QCA as part of mixed-methods designs, such as combinations of QCA and statistical analyses, or a sequence of QCA and (comparative) case studies (via, e.g., process tracing); the inclusion of time aspects into QCA; Coincidence Analysis (CNA, where an a priori decision on which is the explanatory factor and which the condition is not taken) as an alternative to the use of the Quine-McCluskey algorithm; the stability of results; the software development; and the more general question whether QCA development activities should rather target research design or technical issues. From this, a methodological agenda can be derived that asks for the relationship between QCA and quantitative techniques, case study methods, and interpretive methods, but also for increased efforts in reaching a shared understanding of the mission of QCA.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is increasingly establishing itself as a method in social research. QCA is a set-theoretic, truth-table-based method that identifies complex combinations of conditions (configurations) that are necessary and/or sufficient for an outcome. An advantage of QCA is that it models the complexity of social phenomena by accounting for conjunctural, asymmetric, and equifinal patterns. Accordingly, the method does not assume isolated net effects of single variables but recognizes that the effect of a single condition (that is, an explanatory factor) often unfolds only in combination with other conditions. Moreover, QCA acknowledges that the occurrence of a phenomenon can have a different explanation from its non-occurrence. Finally, QCA allows for different, mutually non-exclusive explanations of the same phenomenon. QCA is not only a technique; there is a diversity of approaches to how it can be implemented before, during and after the “technical moment,” depending on the analytic goals related to contributing to theory, engaging with cases, and the approach to explanation. Particularly since 2012, an increasing number of scholars have turned to using QCA to investigate public administrations. Even though the boundaries of Public Administration (PA) as an academic discipline are difficult to determine, it can be defined as an intellectual forum for those who want to understand both public administrations as organizations and their relationships to political, economic, and societal actors—especially in the adoption and implementation of public policies. Owing to its fragmented nature, there has been a long-lasting debate about the methodological sophistication and appropriateness of different comparative methods. In particular, the high complexity and strong context dependencies of causal patterns challenge theory-building and empirical analysis in Public Administration. Moreover, administrative settings are often characterized by relatively low numbers of cases for comparison, as well as strongly multilevel empirical settings. QCA as a technique allows for context-sensitive analyses that take into account this complexity. Against this background, it is not surprising that applications of QCA have become more widespread among scholars of Public Administration. A systematic review of articles using QCA published in the major Public Administration journals shows that the use of QCA started in mid-2000s and then grew exponentially. The review shows that, especially in two thematic areas, QCA has high analytical value and may (alongside traditional methodological approaches) help improve theories and methods of PA. The first area is the study of organizational decision-making and the role of bureaucrats during the adoption and implementation of public policies and service delivery. The second area where QCA has great merits is in explaining different features of public organizations. Especially in evaluation research where the aim is to investigate performance of various kinds (especially effectiveness in terms of both policy and management), QCA is a useful analytical tool to model these highly context-dependent relationships. The QCA method is constantly evolving. The development of good practices for different QCA approaches as well as several methodological innovations and software improvements increases its potential benefits for the future of Public Administration research.

This article examines the effects of labeling though informal and formal sanctions on sex offender reintegration, using qualitative analysis from a probability sample of 153 registered sex offenders in four counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It also provides an overview of sex offender legislation and literature. Results of the study indicate that the majority of respondents experienced negative treatment because of their status as a sex offender. Results also indicate that formal and informal sanctions are stifling opportunities for sex offenders to be fully reintegrated into society and that treatment programs are not as effective as they could be. Implications for sex offender policy and further research are discussed.