The Determinants of Television License Fee Compliance

Sammanfattning: Television license fee compliance in Sweden is very high – 87 percent of television-owning households pay the fee. That people choose to behave in accordance with the law does not in itself come as a surprise, but when the law in question is difficult to enforce and the service provided in many ways lends itself to free-riding, traditional microeconomic theory would tend to predict a higher rate of evasion than is presently seen. The purpose of this study is to empirically explore what determinants are influential in the compliance decision. Restricting ourselves to a set of five hypotheses, we create a multi-factor model of license fee compliance and, through a survey, collect quantitative data to analyze the impact of each factor. We conclude that deterrence measures, in particular risk of detection, are significant but that respondents’ tendencies towards pro-social behavior and free-riding as well as their personal consumption of televised public broadcasts also have some impact on compliance levels. That deterrence factors cannot be exclusively relied on to explain license fee compliance may in turn have implications for how compliance levels are best sustained and encouraged by the authorities.