Fiscal information and stated willingness to pay taxes: evidence from a survey experiment

Abstract We study whether concise fiscal information affects citizens’ stated willingness to pay taxes. We use a four-wave randomized survey experiment conducted in Spain during 2020–2021. Treated respondents received quantitative information on general government revenue as a share of GDP in Spain and selected comparator countries, presented in the survey as a broad indicator of the aggregate fiscal burden, together with a brief discussion of the trade-offs associated with taxation. The treatment increases stated willingness to pay higher taxes for improved public services and social benefits. The main ordered-logit estimate implies an increase of about 4.7 percentage points in the probability of expressing a positive willingness to pay more taxes. The result is robust to alternative codings of the outcome, alternative classifications of prior beliefs, and additional checks addressing interpretation and content specificity. We interpret the estimates as immediate stated responses to fiscal information, rather than as persistent changes in underlying preferences or behaviorally revealed willingness to pay.