The Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Education on Corruption in the Public Organizations of South Korea

Abstract

Anti-corruption education is widely accepted as an effective tool for curbing corruption. However, due to a lack of data, the current literature has not yet been able to comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness of anti-corruption education on corruption or integrity. Using the Integrity Assessment dataset and the Anti-Corruption Education dataset, this paper empirically tests the impact of anti-corruption education on the level of integrity amongst 51 public organizations in South Korea from 2014 to 2018. A fixed-effects model and time-lagged regression enable this study to capture the impacts of anti-corruption education on integrity. This paper finds that if ten percent of employees in a public organization receive anti-corruption education, then the level of comprehensive integrity within that organization will increase by about 0.8 points in the following year. This study also finds that in some conditions, anti-corruption programs have no effect on reducing corruption. These results suggest that anti-corruption education programs are indeed effective in fighting corruption. Public workers should participate in anti-corruption education programs regularly because the program's impact does not last long. Anti-corruption programs should be developed to increase external integrity and internal integrity.