An Experimental Approach to Changing Taxpayers' Attitudes Towards Fairness and compliance via Television.

Prior research has demonstrated a link between attitudes towards fairness and tax compliance intentions. This research describes an experiment designed to improve taxpayers' perceptions of the fairness of the federal income tax system and, thereby, their attitudes about tax compliance. Two sets of three 30-second public service announcements were created and shown to various groups of students and more experienced taxpayers. Post-experimental questionnaires were administered to measure differences in between-group attitudes about tax fairness and compliance, The results indicate that the public service announcements were effective in improving viewers' attitudes towards both the fairness of the income tax and tax compliance. These results suggest that carefully targeted mass media, public service advertising is a potentially effective method for improving public perceptions about tax fairness and attitudes towards compliance.