Public Knowledge About White-Collar Crime in France and the US: A Cross-National Comparison

Abstract

The few studies that measured public knowledge about white-collar crime and its consequences suggested a positive relationship between awareness and punitiveness. However, the participants were found to be, at best, only partially informed about upper-class criminality. Almost a decade later, whether public levels of information have increased is unknown. The present study proposes to (1) capture current levels of public knowledge about white-collar crime in the US and (2) determine if such knowledge is unique or shared by French citizens. A total of 1068 subjects, half of them from the US and the other half from France, answered an online survey that measured their awareness and acceptance of several key evidence-based facts about white-collar crime. Although US participants were found to be more knowledgeable than their French counterparts, they were still largely misinformed about elite deviance and more likely to endorse various myths. These findings imply that more work needs to be done to educate the public about this serious social issue and dispel unfounded beliefs which might affect legal responses to upper-word offenses.