Whistleblowing, fraud prevention, and fraud awareness: Evidence from the Palembang Local Government of Indonesia

Abstract

Fraud is an enormous obstacle to a country’s development because it can cause failure in achieving goals. The most significant source of fraud in Palembang Local Government of Indonesia arises from the procurement of goods and services, which reached 49.1% in 2020. Therefore, this study aims to examine how fraud awareness and good government governance affect fraud prevention. This paper targets one of the Regional Government areas of Palembang City, Indonesia. One hundred twenty-two respondents comprised the head of budget staff, budget user authority staff, and commitment-making committee staff. Data were obtained using a questionnaire with a Likert scale. The study employed two endogenous variables (fraud prevention and fraud awareness), one intervening (fraud awareness), and two exogenous variables (whistleblowing and good government governance). Following this, structural equation models were used to examine the relationships between each variable. The study results show a significant positive effect of whistleblowing and good governance on fraud awareness. In contrast, fraud awareness had no significant impact on fraud prevention. The obtained results found that fraud awareness cannot mediate the whistleblowing system through fraud prevention; also, fraud awareness is not a moderating variable to influence good governance through fraud prevention. The paper contributed empirical evidence to explore fraud prevention approaches by maintaining consistency in the implementation of the whistleblowing system, anti-corruption culture, and supervision to identify unusual activities.