PLoS ONE (Jan 2019)

An international survey of perceptions of the 2014 FIFA World Cup: National levels of corruption as a context for perceptions of institutional corruption.

  • John B Nezlek,
  • David B Newman,
  • Astrid Schütz,
  • Roy F Baumeister,
  • Joanna Schug,
  • Mohsen Joshanloo,
  • Paulo N Lopes,
  • Nicholas P Alt,
  • Marzena Cypryańska,
  • Marco Depietri,
  • Oleg Gorbaniuk,
  • Pascal Huguet,
  • Konstantinos Kafetsios,
  • Selda Koydemir,
  • Peter Kuppens,
  • Sanghee Park,
  • Alvaro San Martin,
  • Juliette Schaafsma,
  • Dora Simunovic,
  • Kunihiro Yokota

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222492
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 9
p. e0222492

Abstract

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We conducted a survey about the 2014 FIFA World Cup that measured attitudes about FIFA, players, and officials in 18 languages with 4600 respondents from 29 countries. Sixty percent of respondents perceived FIFA officials as being dishonest, and people from countries with less institutional corruption and stronger rule of law perceived FIFA officials as being more corrupt and less competent running the tournament than people from countries with more corruption and weaker rule of law. In contrast, respondents evaluated players as skilled and honest and match officials as competent and honest. We discuss the implications of our findings for perceptions of corruption in general.