Tax Morale and Voluntary Tax Compliance: A Systematic Literature Review of Behavioral and Institutional Perspectives
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Tax morale has become an important determinant of voluntary tax compliance, yet existing research remains fragmented between behavioral explanations emphasizing intrinsic motivation and institutional explanations emphasizing trust, fairness, legitimacy, and tax administration. This fragmentation, combined with substantial differences in the conceptualization and measurement of tax morale, limits cumulative understanding of how these mechanisms jointly shape voluntary compliance. This study aimed to systematically synthesize recent evidence on tax morale and voluntary tax compliance by integrating behavioral and institutional perspectives and identifying dominant determinants, theoretical foundations, methodological patterns, and research gaps. A systematic literature review was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 and PRISMA-S guidelines. Peer-reviewed studies published between January 2021 and September 2026 were identified primarily through Scopus and Web of Science, with supplementary citation tracking. Eligible studies were assessed using structured extraction and methodological appraisal procedures and synthesized through descriptive, thematic, and comparative analysis. The findings indicate that tax morale, intrinsic motivation, tax knowledge, social norms, and civic responsibility are important behavioral determinants of compliance, while procedural fairness, distributive fairness, institutional trust, legitimacy, transparency, and administrative quality represent key institutional conditions. The synthesis further indicates that behavioral and institutional mechanisms are complementary rather than competing explanations, with tax morale functioning as an important mechanism connecting institutional perceptions with voluntary compliance. Substantial conceptual and measurement heterogeneity remains a major research challenge. The study contributes an integrated behavioral-institutional framework and provides policy implications for developing fairer, more trustworthy, transparent, and motivation-enhancing tax systems.
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