Public Opinion on Sanctions Compliance and Evasion: Experimental Evidence from the 2022–23 Russia Sanctions

Private companies play a critical role for making economic sanctions work. They may circumvent sanctions, comply, or even limit their business activities beyond what is legally required. This phenomenon of “overcompliance” has often been attributed to public pressure. However, there is little research on public opinion towards corporate behavior regarding sanctions. We theorize that the stigma and information cues associated with sanctions make individuals more likely to support domestic firms withdrawing from a foreign country’s market after the imposition of sanctions, and more likely to disapprove of companies continuing their operations. Two pre-registered survey experiments of public opinion on the post-2022 Russia sanctions show two key findings: First, Germans indeed care about whether firms engage with Russia and disapprove of those who do. Second, firms choosing to continue legal business with Russia cannot argue their way out of this negative public assessment. We establish the generalizability of these results with three replication experiments that vary the identity of the sanctioned state and the nature of the event triggering sanctions.