Peer effects on academic cheating among high school students in Taiwan

Abstract

Although academic cheating has been found to be a common phenomenon in high schools, few studies investigate how peers influence individual cheating behavior among high school students. In this paper, we estimate the cross-gender and intra-gender interaction effects on academic cheating among high school students in Taiwan. We detect the evidence of male–male and female–female peer interactions on academic cheating. The female–female interaction effect is stronger than the male–male interaction effect. These results imply girls are more influenced by female peers on academic cheating. The cross-gender interactions (male to female, female to male interactions) are not significant. Whereas, we find that all of the social interaction coefficients become insignificant when this model allows for school-specific fixed effects.