[author]Huina Xiao

[content]

Why Do People Not Obey the Law? Legal Compliance Theory Review

*Author Huina Xiao

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Macau University of Science and Technology

Abstract: An important topic in the field of regulation and governance studies is why people comply or do not comply with the law. This paper summarises the main influences on law-abiding behaviour, including deterrence, legitimacy（认受性）, peer pressure (or social norms), illegal opportunities and legal expression. The combination of these influencing factors constitutes a different law-abiding structure, thus forming different patterns of law-abiding behavior. The influence of law-abiding factors also shows variability across different areas of regulation and governance (e.g., environmental pollution, tax evasion, traffic violations, food safety, etc.). Under the COVID-19, the degree of compliance with epidemic prevention and control measures and their influencing factors vary among the populations of different countries, and the study of law-abiding theories is of great significance to the formulation and effective implementation of epidemic prevention and control policies. From the perspective of the interaction between the regulator and the regulated, the study of the law-abiding behavior of the regulated will provide an evaluation and basis for the regulation strategy formulation and effect of the regulator.

1.Why study law-abiding ? The interactive perspective between the regulator and the regulated

There are many common illegal acts in daily life, such as littering, environmental pollution, tax evasion, drunk driving, using prohibited drugs and downloading pirated music, pirated video. Everyone breaks the law once in a while, and some people will break it often. The fact that the law is often not obeyed is a common challenge for law enforcement in all areas. The contribution of law and social science research is to shift from the law in books to the law in action, pay attention to the deviation and alienation of the operation of law in daily life, reveal the gap between legal provisions and the operation of law, and find out the factors beyond the law that affect this gap, including society, politics, economy and psychology.

Among them, regulation and governance is an important aspect of observing the operation of law. Regulation and governance research includes the perspective of regulators and regulated. From the perspective of regulators, the independence of regulators, regulatory capacity and regulatory strategies will affect the effect of regulation. But these findings cannot leave the perspective of the regulated. For example, law-abiding research has found that people are willing to comply with the law because they are afraid of being punished. How to ensure the frequency and severity of punishment, so as to ensure sufficient deterrence, requires regulators to improve their regulatory capacity and not be captured. However, law-abiding studies have also found that deterrence has a marginal effect, and legitimacy can ensure voluntary and lasting law-abiding. Improving legitimacy requires that the rules formulated by the regulator are reasonable, in accordance with the law, fair and just, and give the other party the opportunity to express their views.

In addition, many scholars have also proposed risk regulation strategies, that is, to prevent and crack down on illegal activities by predicting the illegal risks in related fields in advance. On the one hand, this may enhance law enforcement deterrence, on the other hand, it can also avoid the antipathy of the regulated people caused by rough law enforcement, thus improving the legitimacy. Law-abiding degree is also an important way to evaluate the effect of regulation and governance.

In short, the study of regulation and governance is inseparable from the interactive perspective of the regulator and the regulated. Only by understanding the real reasons for people 's violation of the law, can the means of regulation and governance be appropriate.

2.Main influencing factors of law-abiding

When drivers comply with the law to avoid receiving traffic police tickets or more serious administrative penalties, deterrence has a great impact on law-abiding. However, when the driver knows that he will not be punished or the probability of punishment is small, he still chooses to abide by the traffic rules because he believes in the law and the authorities，and he believes that the traffic rules should be complied with. At this time, the influence of the legitimacy on people 's law-abiding is more important. Mr. Smith, an Australian citizen, is willing to pay taxes to the country honestly because he thinks that paying taxes is the right thing. At the same time, he had many opportunities to evade taxes, but he did not do so. Of course, another reason for Mr. Smith to do so may be that he hopes to get the praise of his relatives and friends, and to gain recognition and good reputation in the community.

This is an important role of peer pressure or social norms. Similarly, the fact that drivers obey the law more when accompanied by a family member or friend illustrates the influence of peer pressure.In 2017, Mc Adams identified another important factor affecting compliance, that is, the expression of the law. He believes that people obey traffic rules to avoid traffic accidents, which is different from deterrence, legitimacy and peer pressure. In addition, the illegal opportunities formed by some socio-economic environments are also an important motivator in people's decision to comply or not to comply with the law. Overall, the main influencing factors of law-abiding include deterrence, legitimacy, peer pressure, illegal opportunities and legal expression.

2.1 Deterrence

Deterrence refers to threats and punishments from national law enforcement agencies. The measurement of deterrence includes two aspects : one is the likelihood of detection, that is, the probability that an individual is found by a law enforcement agency for an illegal act ; the second is the threat of legal punishment, that is, the probability and severity of an individual being punished by law enforcement agencies for a certain illegal act. Generally speaking, the threat of punishment should measure the severity of sanction and the certainty of sanction at the same time. If the probability of being punished after being found is zero ( the certainty of punishment is zero ), the cost of punishment is zero, and there is no so-called consideration of the severity of punishment ; similarly, if the severity of the punishment after being found is low, the certainty of the punishment will be low. In other words, the severity of punishment and the certainty of punishment affect each other and jointly determine the threat of punishment.

Deterrence theory assumes that the greater the deterrence, the higher the cost of people 's illegality and the higher the degree of law-abiding. The theory of deterrence is mainly verified by two methods : objective and subjective deterrence. Objective deterrence( or actual deterrence ) calculates people 's illegal costs and reveals the relationship between costs and crime rates through the investigation and punishment of law enforcement agencies. For example, Tittle used the Uniform Crime Reports and National Prisoner Statistics to study the impact of punishment certainty and punishment severity on crime rates.

The data show that there is a strong and persistent negative correlation between punishment certainty and crime rate, that is, high punishment certainty leads to low crime rate. The severity of punishment significantly reduces the crime rate of murder, but has no significant effect on other types of crime. Other scholars have also found that objective deterrence has a limited impact on people 's behavior. For example, Andreoni et al. found that objective audit possibilities have little effect on tax compliance. In an experiment, Slemrod et al.found that strict audit and inspection can only promote the law-abiding level of low-and middle-income taxpayers, but reduce the law-abiding level of high-income taxpayers. Zimring and Hawkins argued that beyond a certain limit, the marginal utility of deterrence will no longer increase.

Subjective deterrence (or perceived deterrence) focuses on the individual 's subjective feelings of deterrence. This is because the actual threat of punishment needs to be transmitted to individuals through information dissemination. In the process of communication, personal feelings will adjust deterrence and affect their behavior. As Friedman said, deterrence is mainly influenced by cognition. Compared with cognitive risk, actual risk is not so important. In fact, everyone 's perception of the cost of deterrence is different. For example, two people think that if a violation is found to need to be fined 100 yuan, but one of them feels that the 100 yuan fine cost is low, while the other person may feel that the fine amount is high. Scholars generally believe that subjective deterrence is a more suitable way to verify deterrence theory and its impact on law-abiding behavior. Most of the subsequent studies have used subjective or personal perception data to verify the effect of deterrence.

Based on Arizona high school students ' perception of the possibility of detection and self-reported violations, Jensen et al.found that the higher the subjective deterrence, the less the juvenile violations. Grasmick & Bryjak 's research found that the higher the severity of punishment, the less the violation, and the higher the certainty of punishment, the stronger the correlation. Braithwaite & Makkai 's interview data based on 410 small business executives only partially support the role of the likelihood of detection in compliance, and cannot support the role of certainty and severity of punishment in compliance.

In an experiment on burglary, Decker et al.found that burglary was less likely to be committed only when the perpetrator thought the likelihood of discovery was high and the punishment was severe. On the contrary, based on the survey of students, Paternoster et al. ' s study found that when other variables ( social bond factors, morality, informal punishment, etc. ) are controlled, the role of subjective deterrence ( discovery possibility ) disappears. They believe that the inadequacy of previous studies is that they do not fully consider and deal with the relationship between other variables and deterrence.

In their research on corporate crime, Paternoster & Simpson found that punishing threats, ethical and organizational factors can effectively reduce corporate crime. When the moral sense is strong, the impact of costs and benefits is weak ; when the moral sense is weak, the impact of cost and benefit is high, that is, the pressure brought by punishment threat and informal punishment ( such as reputation damage ) increases. This study suggests that other broader law-abiding factors should be taken into account to verify deterrence effectiveness.

Subjective deterrence also often needs to distinguish between the different effects of general deterrence ( or aggregate deterrence ) and specific deterrence ( or individual deterrence ) on behavior. General deterrence comes from the experience of others who have suffered illegal consequences. Specific deterrence is an individual 's previous experience of being punished. The aforementioned studies of subjective deterrence all measure specific deterrence. Yan Sen et al.also found that specific deterrence can reduce illegal behavior more than general deterrence in the study of Arizona high school students.

Based on a survey of 233 companies in different industries in the United States, Thornton et al.studied the impact of general deterrence on environmental behavior. They found that only 42 % of the interviewed enterprises can identify ' major cases ', 89 % of the enterprises know that other enterprises have encountered law enforcement, and 63 % of the enterprises make law-abiding measures to adjust the known law enforcement situation. Since most companies have been law-abiding for various reasons, general deterrence does not strengthen the risk of legal punishment, but it can confirm to the law-abiding that they are not stupid and remind them to maintain their existing law-abiding behavior. They also reveal the role of general deterrence through the interaction of responsibility and specific deterrence.

As shown in Table 1, when the specific deterrence is low and the sense of responsibility is strong, the general deterrence is weak but unnecessary ; when the specific deterrence and sense of responsibility are strong, the general deterrence is effective but not necessary ; when the specific deterrence and sense of responsibility are weak, the general deterrence is ineffective ; when the specific deterrence is strong and the sense of responsibility is weak, the general deterrence is effective.

Deterrence theory verification The results vary due to differences in research methods ( such as economics, experiments, or social surveys ), research subjects ( such as burglary, murder, environmental violations, or tax evasion ), law enforcement methods ( such as fines, fixed-term imprisonment, or the death penalty ), and control variables. However, in general, the research on deterrence theory has evolved from objective to subjective methods, and tends to incorporate more law-abiding factors into the analysis of the actual impact of deterrence. Deterrence is still important for law-abiding, but restrictions need to be considered. For example, deterrence only plays a greater role for low- and middle-income people, but plays an opposite role for high-income people. When the moral sense is strong, the role of deterrence is strengthened ; the stronger the law-abiding social norms, the greater the role of deterrence.

2.2 Legitimacy

Tyler 's classic book " Why People Obey the Law " proposes that the legitimacy can independently improve people 's compliance with the law and promote voluntary compliance. He believes that the legitimacy refers to the moral / substantive judgment that people accept the authority, exclude the influence of deterrence or do not consider the content of the law. The legitimacy and morality are different. Morality has a greater impact on people 's behavior than the legitimacy, but morality may make people not obey the law, while the legitimacy will promote law-abiding. For example, during the Vietnam War, soldiers who believed in the government would fight without hesitation, while soldiers who believed that the war was immoral would violate the law. Therefore, rulers or authorities can promote people 's loyalty by increasing their legitimacy.

Taylor proposed two dimensions to measure the legitimacy, one is the obligation to obey the law and the support for legal authorities. Obligation to comply with the law is mainly to understand the extent to which people feel that they should comply with police instructions or court decisions, regardless of personal feelings. For example, one of the dimensions is ' even if I think the law is wrong, I always abide by the law '. Support for the legal authorities mainly to understand the extent to which people think that the legal authorities are worthy of respect and support.

So how do the legal authorities maintain their own recognition ? Taylor found that in the process of people 's contact with the legal authorities, whether the results are positive or negative, people who believe that the procedure is fair always have a higher legitimacy than those who believe that the procedure is unfair. He called procedural justice has a ' buffering effect '. Based on this, he believes that procedural justice is the antecedent of legitimacy, which can promote the legitimacy and thus enhance law-abiding.

Although there are differences in the measurement of procedural justice in each study, it can be summarized into five dimensions : dignity, trustworthiness, process control, equal treatment and neutrality. The five dimensions correspond to the question : Do the legal authorities treat you with respect and dignity ? Are they fair ? Do they give you a chance to express your opinion ? Do they treat you equally ? Do they make decisions based on facts rather than their own subjective views ? A series of studies after Taylor and other researchers have proved his point of view.

There are also many challenges to Taylor's view. These challenges are mainly twofold. The first is to question the constituent elements of legitimacy. Based on survey data from the Spanish island of Trinidad, Johnson et al. (Johnson et al) found that one of the elements of Taylor's acceptability, institutional trust, and the two components of procedural justice were highly correlated. This implies that there is a problem with the measurement of Taylor's recognizability and procedural justice. In addition, their study also showed that another element of Taylor's acceptability, the obligation to comply with the law, is not related to acceptability. For example, in some countries there are problems of corruption and injustice in the legal authorities. In these countries, people's recognition of their obligation to obey the law is likely to be based on fear of the legal authorities rather than on the perception that the legal authorities are legally justified. They also found a significant role for the effectiveness of law enforcement.

This is consistent with the findings of Tankebe (2009). Tankebe did not find evidence to support Taylor's view in the Ghanaian survey data, but found that the effectiveness of law enforcement played a significant role in people's law-abiding behavior.

In a subsequent study in 2013, Tankebe redefined acceptability. He argued that legitimacy should include four major dimensions, namely procedural justice, substantive justice, effectiveness, and lawfulness. The results of his empirical study verified that the four dimensions of recognizability can significantly promote law-abidingness. In fact, before Tankebe, Murphy & Cherney have proposed to distinguish legitimacy into law legitimacy and procedural legitimacy. Legal legitimacy is concerned with the degree of recognition and legitimacy of the content of the law itself, while procedural legitimacy refers to the degree of recognition and legitimacy of the legal authorities and the procedures they use.

In addition, Taylor's path of theoretical substantiation has been questioned. Figure 1 shows Taylor's theoretical evidential path. The legal authorities first show procedural justice to the citizens, who feel procedural justice and thus acceptability, and finally promote compliance with the law. In the path from 1 to 2, can citizens perceive the procedural justice demonstrated by the legal authorities?

A study by Worden & Mclean compares citizens' subjective perceptions of objective procedural justice. Trained observers collected 539 videos of police-citizen encounters with traffic offenses involving police procedural justice and injustice approaches. They found weak correlations between objective and subjective procedural justice, while third-party (trained observers') evaluations of procedural injustice significantly affected their perceptions of procedural justice.

Skogan (2001) also found that when people feel a procedural injustice during an interaction with a legal authority, the intensity of this bad experience is 4-14 times greater than a good experience, so much so that it is difficult for the legal authority to reverse the perception of this bad experience, no matter how much it tries to change its attitudes, procedures, and services.

Mastrofski et al.'s research is consistent with Skogan's findings. They observed the compliance of Richmond, Virginia citizens with police requirements and found that police disrespect significantly reduced their level of compliance, but police efforts to show respect to citizens did not significantly improve their level of compliance. Therefore, if citizens cannot accurately feel the procedural justice behavior of the police, they cannot internalize it, resulting in a sense of procedural justice and legitimacy. Can legitimacy improve compliance in the third to fourth path? Some scholars have not found a significant correlation between legitimacy and compliance, and have pointed out that Taylor's theory on legitimacy and compliance needs to consider the influence of different countries and social environments.

Although there are theoretical controversies about the constituent elements of legitimacy, empirical studies on both Taylor's program led legitimacy and Tankebe Ratio's four element legitimacy have shown that legitimacy itself has a promoting effect on compliance with the law.

2. 3 Peer pressure (social norms)

Another driving force for law-abiding may come from pressure from friends, family, organizations, and communities. In order to avoid rumors, scandals, shame, or embarrassment, people want to comply with the law. Peer pressure or social norms can increase the cost of non-compliance. Therefore, it is often referred to as social punishment. People's adherence to social norms mainly stems from four types of incentives. The first is based on private transaction interests. For example, Macaulay found that for long-term economic or ethical values (long-term business partnerships), merchants generally do not choose to use formal contract terms to resolve disputes, and it is also difficult to uphold their contractual rights. The second is based on emotions. For example, in order to maintain dignity, allowing people to maintain social norms of revenge. The third is social disapproval, notoriety, or ridicule. The fourth is based on self blame or guilt.

In Posner, social norms are an equilibrium-signaling. When people shake hands, tie ties or wear high heels, eat with knives and forks, make charitable donations, exchange gifts between family members, and participate in ritual activities, they are all signaling that they are good people. For example, taxpayers who comply with legal regulations to pay taxes to the country are for the sake of their reputation. They hope to send a signal to the country and other people in society, telling them that they are a good person, and thus promoting future exchanges and interests.

Many studies have shown that peer pressure and other compliance factors constrain or promote each other. Gunningham et al. interviewed 14 paper mills (7 in the United States, 4 in Canada, and 3 in Australia). Due to pressure from neighbors, community members, and environmental organizations, some paper mills were subjected to greater social pressure than law enforcement, resulting in a phenomenon of 'beyond compliance'. They also discovered the relationship between social norms and other law-abiding factors.

On the one hand, law enforcement deterrence will expand the influence of social norms. Enterprises can judge the information of illegal enterprises through law enforcement, thereby strengthening the social pressure on these enterprises. On the contrary, social norms will also expand the role of law enforcement deterrence. For example, social pressure makes legislators and law enforcement officials feel that supervision and regulation should be strengthened.

On the other hand, when enterprises face more economic pressures, such as market competition and manufacturing costs, the influence of social norms on compliance will decrease. In another study, based on a survey of 1406 Australian citizens, Wenzel found that when social norms were weak, deterrence had no effect on compliance with the law; On the contrary, when social norms are strong, deterrence will significantly reduce tax evasion. Similarly, Chang&Lai found that when tax evasion through cooperation between buyers and sellers becomes a social norm, the law enforcement deterrent effect of tax authorities is weak. Therefore, as Lederman said, social norms and law enforcement deterrence are complementary, and law enforcement can promote law-abiding social norms.

2.4 Opportunity to break the law

Opportunity to violate the law refers to the economic or social conditions under which an individual or enterprise can violate the law without being detected. For individuals, these conditions may include age, employment, income level, education and knowledge. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) statistics from 1985 indicate that married taxpayers under age 65 are more likely to evade taxes. The level of compliance also varies by occupation. Taxpayers in trade evaded the largest percentage of taxes, while business taxpayers in finance, real estate, and insurance evaded the least.

Cloward & Ohlin found that young people are more likely to engage in illegal behavior if they do not have good education, employment, and community environments. The effects of gender, age, income, and education on compliance were also found to be significant in Taylor's study. In addition to the characteristics of the violator, the factors of the environment cannot be ignored. Cohen & Felson proposed the "routine activity approach" (routine activity approach), that is, most criminal behavior requires the combination of three spatial and temporal elements, including offenders (likely offenders), suitable targets and the absence of a law-abiding person.

For enterprises, the size of the enterprise, the market environment, the economic strength, the type of product, the trading pattern and the development of the industry may all increase the chance of violating the law. According to Kagan, the more visible the enterprise or transaction mode, the more likely to be found illegal, so "visibility" is an important factor in the opportunity of the enterprise to violate the law. The larger the enterprise and the better its economic performance, the higher its visibility. State-owned or foreign-owned enterprises, monopolies and resource-based enterprises are often more likely to be monitored by tax authorities. Whether an enterprise has sufficient resources (capital and employees) or knowledge can also influence the chances of violating the law. This aspect is also known as capacity to obey.

2.5 Expression of the law

When people obey the rules of the road in order to avoid accidents, Mike Adams calls this element of compliance the expression of the law. The expression of law means that the law itself has a coordinating function and an information function. The coordinating function of law is that the provisions of law promote the coordination of social order. For example, traffic laws specify the primary rules of driving, and traffic signs (such as stop signs, traffic lights, one-way signs, etc.) tell people that other drivers will follow the same rules. This is a natural attraction that provides people with suggestions for behavior. When a law specifies a particular behavioral choice, it changes people's behavioral expectations. For example, anti-smoking laws give non-smokers the right to resist smokers, and knowing this, smokers will behave cautiously. The informational function of laws is manifested through people's own evaluations.

If a new law requires seat belts, it first conveys the message that it is dangerous not to wear a seat belt as the legislator maintains, second it also tells individuals what other citizens generally think about seat belts, and finally if an individual prefers to wear a seat belt, the new law is telling him that other people prefer to wear seat belts as well. As Mike Adams said, "Laws provide information, information changes perceptions, and new perceptions change behavior." Mike Adams sees deterrence, recognition, coordination, and information as different mechanisms by which laws influence behavior. The law promotes compliance, but people often do not do so because of the deterrence of the law, but rather because they want to avoid expensive costs by harmonizing with others in society.

3. The Structure of Compliance

Different combinations of law-abiding influences form different law-abiding structures and thus different law-abiding behaviors. The structure of compliance varies depending on the type of compliance actor and the field of enforcement. In addition, because of different fields of regulation, scholars may combine, expand, or narrow the content and scope of the above compliance factors. Table 2 lists a number of such studies.

According to Kagan & Scholz, the causes of corporate non-compliance are economic calculations, disagreement with principles, and organizational capacity. Firms that routinely calculate the costs and benefits of violating the law, focusing on the potential costs of committing a particular offense, are "amoral calculators. This factor is essentially the same as deterrence. But economic calculations can be counterproductive. Enforcers may overlook truly serious problems that may not have been anticipated by rulemakers. In addition, enforcement itself can inspire resentment in those subject to regulation, making it harder to build a culture of cooperation. Some businesses will lobby or attack legislators because of enforcement.

The second factor is principle disagreement. When firms feel that legal rules or regulatory behavior are unreasonable, they choose not to comply. Here it is more like recognizability as defined by Tankebe. They believe that contradictory government rules, bureaucratic or unprofessional law enforcers, unreasonable requests for written documents, delays in processing, and government inaction and inefficiency are all triggers of principle disagreement for businesses. However, the factor is difficult to be overcome by the enforcers as each enterprise faces a different environment and may have a different understanding of the rules and enforcement behaviors, and it is difficult for the enforcers to adjust their rules or behaviors in accordance with individual cases.

The third factor is organizational failure. If a business does not have sufficient resources or a stable and reliable management system, it is difficult to comply with the law. However, this factor is also unpredictable and not actionable for enforcers, because enforcers' regulatory measures are usually oriented to a group or an industry, and it is difficult to focus on the organizational failure of individual firms.

A series of studies on corporate environmental compliance by Sunden et al. classified the factors of compliance into three categories, including regulatory license, social license, and economic license. Regulatory license refers to legal requirements, enforcement deterrents, or access requirements. Social license refers to pressures from communities, environmental organizations, employees and the media. Economic license refers to competition in the marketplace, firm size, economic performance, and other constraints. The combination of strengths and weaknesses of these factors creates different patterns of compliance behavior (Table 3).

True believers in environmental protection believe it is the right thing to do, and they feel the pressure of their communities and regulatory pressures. They take many environmental protection measures, sometimes even going beyond the legal requirements for compliance. This stems mainly from their inner recognition of environmental protection laws. Environmental strategists generally have longer-term environmental goals, which are consistent with those of businesses. They also go beyond compliance with the law due to community pressure. Their relationship with the regulator is strategic, and they want to build an honest and reliable relationship with the regulator in order to reap long-term economic benefits. Committed law-abiders are conscious of their responsibilities and strive to meet regulatory requirements. They invest only in those environmental measures that they believe will bring economic benefits. Hesitant compliers aim to meet the minimum requirements and standards of the law. They do not want to be fully law-abiding and do not have a sense of responsibility for compliance. Their findings are similar to studies of corporate compliance in other fields.

May used the structure of positive and negative motivation in her construction site safety compliance study. Positive motivations include recognition and social norms, while negative motivations include the opportunity to break the law (ability to comply) and the economic pressure created by enforcement deterrence. Nelson and Parker's study, on the other hand, includes economic, social, and normative dynamics.

In tax compliance research, Kirchler et al. propose two dimensions of power and trust. Power refers to taxpayers' perceptions of tax authorities' efforts to combat tax evasion, including the frequency and depth of tax examinations and penalties. The power of tax authorities is closely linked to legislation as well as government budgets. Trust is the perception of tax authorities by individuals and social groups. They use the term "slippery slope" to describe the relationship between power and trust.

On the one hand, trust affects power. There are two forms of power, namely, legitimate power and coerced power. Coerced power is in the low-trust region, while coerced power is in the high-trust region. As trust increases, the more people support the tax authorities and relieve them of their work, and the power of the tax authorities increases. Conversely, trust decreases and power decreases. On the other hand, power affects trust. When tax authorities increase the number of examinations, taxpayers develop mistrust, so the higher the power of coercion, the lower the trust. When tax authorities let people know that tax evasion will be effectively combated, honest taxpayers will increase. Thus, the recognized power itself will increase trust.

In sum, power and trust interact with each other. Legitimate power and trust together form the highest level of compliance. They also argue that factors such as deterrence, tax rates, tax knowledge and participation, attitudes toward paying taxes, social norms, and fairness are all closely related to power and trust, so that the structure of power and trust can encompass all of the factors of tax compliance embodied in the current study.

Measurement of compliance is a challenge. There is no fixed answer to the content and standard of compliance, which is influenced by the field of regulation and the sources of available data. On the one hand, standards of compliance vary by regulatory domain. For example, in a study of environmental compliance by paper companies, Gerningham et al. determined the level of compliance of companies through the emission of different types of pollutants. On the other hand, the standard of compliance is limited by data sources. Researchers usually need to obtain behavioral patterns of compliance in limited data.

Thus scholars need to specify the measurements and limitations of compliance in a study. So how do you get data on law-abiding behavior? Researchers' data come from three main sources, which are data from law enforcement agencies, unsolicited reports (self-report), and observations. First, government data is usually richer and more adequate, but this type of data may not fully meet the researcher's research objectives. Second, the self-reporting method encourages respondents to tell about their tax evasion behavior, which may contain false or inaccurate information. The active reporting method also has the problem of incomplete data. Third, the observation method involves the researcher directly observing the behavior of individuals or businesses to determine their compliance.

4. Research on Legal Compliance in the Global Epidemic

After the outbreak of COVID-19, a number of international legal and social science scholars have been conducting studies in several countries to measure and research the degree of support, acceptance or compliance with anti-epidemic measures (e.g., keeping a social distance, home orders, and wearing face masks, etc.), as well as to reveal the legal and behavioral factors affecting different attitudes and behavioral choices of the people, social, economic, cultural and psychological factors that influence people's attitudes and behavioral choices. These countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany.

However, early studies have focused on whether people support and accept anti-epidemic measures, how they perceive the effectiveness of these measures, and what factors influence this support and acceptance. For example, Gadarian et al and Maekelae et al examined people's support for anti-epidemic measures and the reasons for it, while Zettler et al examined what factors influence people's acceptance of anti-epidemic measures. But these studies do not reveal people's actual behavioral choices, compliance or resistance. Some studies, while revealing the extent to which people comply with anti-epidemic measures over time, do not indicate what factors influence their behavior.

As of the end of July 2020, there were four articles in the academic community examining people's level of compliance with anti-epidemic measures. Based on an analysis of data collected from 570 respondents from 35 U.S. states on April 3, 2020, Ben Liu et al. (Van Rooijetal) found that perceptual deterrence did not influence compliance behavior. They found that two types of factors had a significant effect on compliance: external factors, including people's ability to follow the rules, the chance of violating the rules, and self-control; and internal factors, including moral support for the epidemic prevention measures and social norms.

In another study, Kooistra et al. found through a survey of 553 British citizens (data collected April 6-8, 2020) that the main reasons for people's compliance with home orders and social distancing were people's ability to obey the rules and their internalized sense of responsibility to obey the law.

As in the study by Liuben et al. they also found that deterrence did not help much in people's compliance with immunization measures.

In a study of home order compliance in the Netherlands, Kuiper et al. (2010), using data from a sample of 568 people, found that the stronger the sense of morality and social norms, the greater the degree of compliance with the home order. In addition, if people lacked the ability to comply and there were opportunities to violate the rules, their compliance decreased. Therefore, if the government provides help in keeping social distance and reduces the chances of unsafe gatherings, people's compliance will increase. Also in the Netherlands, Folmer et al. found that people's ability to maintain a safe social distance stemmed from perceptions of the threat of the virus, content support for safe social distance measures, and the ability to comply with the rules.

The above studies share three common findings: firstly, people's perception of deterrence is not important, the frequency of penalties and severity of penalties imposed by law enforcers for violations do not play a significant role in people's compliance behavior. Secondly, people's ability to comply with the rules is important, while the government formulates anti-epidemic measures, it should also differentiate between different people's actual ability to comply with the rules, e.g., some people who are unable to buy face masks or who have financial difficulties will not be able to comply with the anti-epidemic measure requirement of wearing face masks. Thirdly, people's internal moral support for the anti-epidemic measures is also important for compliance; people will not comply if they consider the measures taken by the government on anti-epidemic to be unreasonable.

However, there are discrepancies in the findings of the above studies. For example, Ben Liu et al. found that self-control was important, but the other three studies did not find this, and Vollmer et al. found that people's concern about the virus motivated people to consciously adopt anti-epidemic measures, but the other three studies did not mention this. Therefore, more research is needed to support these findings.

5. Use of compliance theory in regulation and governance policy

The results of compliance theory have been widely used in regulation and governance policies. The most typical example is responsive regulation. Ayres & Braithwaite proposed the responsive regulation strategy of "tit for tat" (TFT), adopting different enforcement strategies according to the severity of the regulator's behaviors and motivational attitudes, so as to establish a benign cooperative regulation model. The theory of responsive regulation holds that people have complex motives and attitudes, and should be deterred and punished or persuaded and forgiven according to the attitude of the regulated. Sauerz's "tit for tat" game model finds that regulators should avoid deterrence as long as firms remain cooperative, not based on the assumption that people are born cooperative, but on the fact that it pays more to regulate at that point, and that when firms are tempted to cheat, regulators can shift from cooperation to deterrence. This strategy maximizes the payoff of regulation, and violators can easily recognize the signals and adjust their behavior.

Field studies by Bleitwit and his collaborators of pharmaceutical firms, coal miners, and nursing homes, among others, reveal different motivations for compliance. For example, in coal mine safety regulation, coal mine owners are sometimes driven by economic rationality and sometimes by social responsibility. If regulators penalize the latter harshly it will rub off on their good nature and thus be counterproductive. Regulators have always been sympathetic to businesses that inherently want to establish safe and healthy working environments, and enforcement experience has taught them that forgiveness, education and persuasion can have a greater effect on compliance.

In the late 1990s, the Australian Taxation Office introduced a series of reforms aimed at creating a culture of voluntary compliance. The tax compliance model was designed on the basis of responsive regulation. The model consists of three components, namely motivational postures, enforcement strategies and regulatory strategies.

The first motivational postures are commitment, the taxpayer's belief in the goals of the tax system, the fulfillment of moral obligations for the collective good, and the ability to pay taxes in good faith. The enforcement strategy is to educate, keep records, and provide services that allow taxpayers to self-regulate.

The second motivational manifestation is capitulation, where taxpayers perceive the tax authorities as the rightful authority and believe that they will be gentle with taxpayers as long as they behave appropriately and obey them. In this case, the tax authorities need to check the taxpayers' business behavior and review their tax records in real time, and the regulation strategy should be adjusted to coercive self-regulation.

The third motivational manifestation is opposition (resistance), skepticism about the motives of the tax authorities, the belief that the tax authorities are more interested in catching taxpayers in the wrong than in helping you to do the right thing, that taxpayers will never be able to satisfy the tax authorities, and that more people need to come together to boycott the tax authorities. The tax authorities should implement audits at this point and apply a more lenient command-and-control strategy.

The fourth motivational manifestation is indifference (disengagement), where the purpose of the tax department is questioned in more ways than one and the demands of the tax department are challenged. In this case, the tax department should prosecute the taxpayer's illegal behavior, and can only use strict command-and-control strategy.

6. Conclusion

This paper has systematically presented the research development of compliance theory, specifically the influencing factors of compliance and the structure of compliance. Influential factors of compliance include deterrence, acceptance, peer pressure, opportunity to violate the law, and legal expression. These different factors manifest themselves differently in different areas of regulation and governance. Their combination will create different structures of compliance. In the     COVID-19 epidemic, countries have developed specific measures to prevent and control the epidemic. Questions such as whether these measures will be complied with by the general population and the influencing factors affecting the different levels of compliance by the general population will provide an assessment and basis for the development of preventive and control measures.