Sprott researchers awarded seed grant to study how a financially focused self-concept influences personal income tax behaviours

Congratulations to Merridee Bujaki (Professor, Accounting) and François Brouard (Professor, Accounting) who have received a REALISE Seed Grant to develop a new interdisciplinary collaboration with Nassim Tabri (Associate Professor) and Michael Wohl (Professor), both of the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

The REALISE Seed Grant is an internal funding program, offered by Carleton’s Office of the Vice-President (Research and International) on a one-year pilot basis, to initiate new interfaculty, multidisciplinary research collaborations that have the potential to lead to external funding proposals or joint publications within two years.

This project will extend previous research that suggests that individuals with a financially focused self-concept (i.e., who overvalue the importance of financial success when determining self-worth) may be prone to gambling problems. In particular, it will investigate a potential connection between financially focused self-concepts and support for aggressive tax minimization strategies.

To this end, the team will recruit people working and studying in the field of financial management (e.g., as accountants, financial advisors, tax lawyers; n=1,000) for a self-report survey that will assess, among other things, willingness to pay taxes (tax morale), perceptions of government use of taxes, and the extent to which they have a financially focused self-concept. Findings will provide valuable insights into the factors that influence individuals’ tax payment behaviours, with implications for tax policy and financial education.