Imeri, GentianaGentianaImeri2023-04-132023-04-132020https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/112845That people comply with the law because they fear punishment for their non-compliance is, among legal academics and practitioners, a widely held notion of how law works. This dissertation, however, advocates a different approach by studying the so-called expressive function of law. According to this account, law shapes individual behavior by its mere statements and not by its sanctions. From the lawmaker's perspective this function of law is particularly appealing because it promises to achieve socially desirable outcomes with a minimal degree of law enforcement. This not only proves useful for national legislation, where governments seek to minimize costs of law enforcement, but also for international lawmaking, where centralized means of law enforcement barely exist. This dissertation aims to contribute to this promising but nascent literature by studying the expressive function of law in an experimental game theory setting. The central question is whether the so-called focal point of expressive law has the power to induce individual legal compliance in severe social dilemmas. Under the conditions of a dynamic public good game, which represents a 'hard case', standard rational choice theory predicts no significant behavioral effects for the expressive function of law. However, the two present experimental studies test the expressive function of law under these stringent conditions and generate two contrary findings: First, the focal point of expressive law causes a significantly positive compliance effect in the public good context, provided it is marginally enforced and has a level that is sufficiently above the natural threshold of individual cooperation. Second and more importantly, the focal point of expressive law achieves a significantly positive compliance effect also in the absence of central enforcement, namely in socially interrelated groups in which individuals can observe each other's behavior. Socially cohesive groups seem to be characterized by an increased betrayal aversion, which in the case of discovered disloyalty among group members causes a downward spiral in cooperation and compliance, respectively. The focal point, however, significantly counteracts this betrayal effect by strengthening reciprocal trust and cooperativeness among group members. Moreover, crowding-in of individual cooperation and legal compliance is even stronger if the focal point is combined with a minimal sanction. This second finding is novel in the literature and highlights that, under given social conditions, individual legal compliance can be caused by mere legal expression. It shall then be the goal of future research to further identify and test these conditions to provide a stronger empirical basis for the expressive function of law.enRechtstheorieRechtsnormDurchsetzungExperimentEDIS-4994Rechtsbefolgunglaw and behaviorexperimental law and economicslegal compliancecompliance with lawThe expressive function of lawexperimentelle Rechtsforschungexpressive law and economicsExpressive Funktion des Rechtslegal theorybehavioral law and economicsdoctoral thesis