Understanding and managing behavioural risks: the case of malpractice in poultry production

The probability that economic actors break rules increases with the profits they thus expect to earn. It decreases with the probability and level of losses resulting from detection. It also decreases with social factors which shield actors from yielding to economic temptations. This article gives an accentuated description of major schools of thought concerned with economic misconduct. It emphasizes the need for a comprehensive behavioural economic analysis and outlines an analytical framework for this purpose. Understanding material incentives as major, albeit partial drivers of economic behaviour which need to be attacked, we develop a game-theoretic approach for reconstructing the economic incentives of profit-oriented actors. Using the approach to process expert estimates and approximating the incentives of actors in the poultry industries exposes many critical settings where temptations arise to breach production-related standards (crimes against consumers).