Not so great expectations: Gas revenue, corruption and willingness to pay tax in Tanzania

Abstract

Huge reservoirs of natural gas have been discovered offshore the southern coast of Tanzania. There are high expectations that exploitation of natural resources will substantially increase Tanzania’s national income. This brief presents results from a recent survey experiment of 3000 respondents in Dar es Salaam, Mtwara gas revenue causally increase expectations about corruption, it has no effect on willingness to pay tax. We argue that successful handling of the gas discoveries should include strategies to keep people’s expectations about future gas revenues realistic and to strengthen the control of corruption.