Whistleblowing and Identity

Sammanfattning: The incentives of whistleblowing have not been much in focus in economic literature. This is mainly due to conventional economics having a hard time explaining the incentives of a behavior that seemingly yields no benefits and carries heavy costs. The scarce economic research on whistleblowing incentives suggests that blowing the whistle is driven by monetary rewards and a wish to punish. These suggestions are however not supported by empirics. The importance of identity has been stressed by sociological and psychological research on whistleblowing. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to propose an economic model on whistleblowing incentives which incorporates identity. By using the social perspective of identity economics, we abandon the individualistic and materialistic view proposed by current economic research. In order to exemplify our identity utility model, we apply the model to several whistleblowing cases.