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We conduct laboratory experiments to study peer effects on compliance with extortive requests. To this aim, we use an "extortion game" with multiple victims. In agreement with our hypothesis, our results show that when the information on peers' behavior is available, compliance with appropriative requests is triggered by conformism among victims rather than by punishment. Moreover, we find that extorted sums are rather small, requests are proportional to the victim's earnings, similar across victims, and are significantly lower when the extorter self-selects into this role. Punishment is rare, but effective. Finally, our results indicate that fairness concerns matter even in a context of extra-legal taxation, shaping both extorters' requests and victims' compliance.

Three main motivations can explain compliance with social norms: fear of peer punishment, the desire for others' esteem and the desire to meet others' expectations. Though all play a role, only the desire to meet others' expectations can sustain compliance when neither public nor private monitoring is possible. Theoretical models have shown that such desire can indeed sustain social norms, but empirical evidence is lacking. Moreover it is unclear whether this desire ranges over others' "empirical" or "normative" expectations. We propose a new experimental design to isolate this motivation and to investigate what kind of expectations people are inclined to meet. Results indicate that, when nobody can assign either material or immaterial sanctions, the perceived legitimacy of others' normative expectations can motivate a significant number of people to comply with costly social norms.

In this paper we introduce the "extortion game" and propose a set of experiments aimed at studying both the extorter's and the victim's behavior. The primary focus of our experiments is understanding what determines both the extent of the extortive request and the victim's reaction in terms of compliance. Our results show that the extorter's requests are proportional to the victim's earnings, similar across victims and positively correlated with the level of request the extorter perceives as "fair". Punishment is rare and the extorted sums are rather small. Results also shed light on the motivations that make a victim compliant with extortive requests, confirming that punishment plays a role in promoting compliance, but also showing the importance of other concurrent factors like information about peers' behavior and the perceived fairness of the request. Overall, our results indicate that fairness concerns matter even in a context of extra-legal taxation, shaping both extorters' requests and victims' compliance.