“Anything worth winning is worth cheating for”? Determinants of cheating behavior among business and theology students

Previous literature discussing driving forces in students’ decisions to cheat in examinations has produced conflicting results. Consensus has emerged however, that in very many social situations including academic settings, in particular business administration and economics students tend to behave less socially-oriented than others. Accordingly, building on the “fraud triangle” and economic reasoning, we study cheating among—allegedly pro-social—students of (Protestant and Catholic) theology as well as—allegedly anti-social—students of business, using a sample of 850 such students from a large German university. Our results show that in fact, significant differences in cheating behavior do not exist across subjects (notably, with Catholic theology and business students displaying equally fraudulent tendencies), but rather, the incentives and opportunity costs driving students to cheat diverge: Whereas business students strongly act on incentives, theologists’ choices are driven by costs in terms of sanctions, especially by avoiding social stigma. The findings explain previous contradictory results in the literature by highlighting the underlying economic reasoning in cheating decisions, and help foster, promote, and fine-tune incentive and control schemes in the context of discouraging cheating strategies in academia.