Explaining cheating in schools with Situational Action Theory: Within-estimations using a German school panel

Wikström's Situational Action Theory (SAT) explains rule-breaking by reference to the cognitive perception-choice process, which indicates how a person's propensity to break rules interacts with the setting's criminogeneity. SAT's situational model claims that the interaction between personal morality and the moral norms of the setting, the so-called moral filter, is critical in the explanation of rule-breaking, and that the influence of self-control is subordinate to this process. Self-control becomes relevant when individuals whose personal morality discourages rule-breaking are exposed to settings in which the moral norms encourage rule-breaking, that is, if the moral filter is conflicted. Whereas most previous studies have equated the moral filter with personal morality, we consider the moral norms of the setting as well. This allows for a more rigorous test of the moral filter, and thus the conditionality of self-control. Here, we investigate student cheating, using data from two waves of a large-scale German school panel study, and we conceptualise the setting's moral norms by reference to the descriptive norm: other students’ cheating behaviour. This ensures the spatio-linkage between the setting's criminogeneity and rule-breaking, which is necessary for investigating SAT. Additionally, our estimation strategy – person and school fixed-effect models – controls for alternative explanations by the selection of people into settings with different levels of criminogeneity. Moreover, it controls for heterogeneity across persons and schools. The findings are in line with SAT's predictions. In cases of a correspondence between personal morality and the moral norms of a setting, students with rule-abiding morality are least likely to cheat, whereas students with a rule-breaking morality are the most likely to cheat. Also, in line with SAT, self-control only matters for students with rule-abiding morality when they are exposed to moral norms that encourage rule-breaking.