Dr. Žiga Puklavec (he/his)
School for Social Sciences
A 5, 6
Building A – Room A 434
68159 Mannheim
about me
Žiga Puklavec received his PhD from Tilburg University (the Netherlands) in 2025. Before joining the University of Mannheim, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Jurisprudence at the University of Amsterdam. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maribor (Slovenia) and a master’s degree from the University of Vienna (Austria).
His main research interests lie in economic psychology, particularly how psychological factors shape financial and tax-related decision-making. He currently studies what drives people to pay taxes, with a focus on the moral and emotional dimensions of taxation and on how people communicate about taxes online. Methodologically he employs experimental, quantitative, and computational approaches; his methods include lab and online experiments, analysis of large-scale archival data, text mining, and natural language processing.
Publications
Publications
Google scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sbN5SbEAAAAJ&hl=en
Puklavec, Ž., Kogler, C., Stavrova, O., & Zeelenberg, M. (2025). Unobscuring the Concept of Tax Morale: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Journal of Business Ethics.
Puklavec, Ž., Stavrova, O., Kogler, C., & Zeelenberg, M. (2025). Exploring the morality of tax morale. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 35(1), e70042. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.70042
Puklavec, Ž., Stavrova, O., Kogler, C., & Zeelenberg, M. (2024). Diffusion of tax-related communication on social media. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 110, 102203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2024.102203
Puklavec, Ž., Kogler, C., Stavrova, O., & Zeelenberg, M. (2023). What we tweet about when we tweet about taxes: A topic modelling approach. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 212, 1242-1254. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.07.005
Enachescu, J.✝, Puklavec, Ž.✝, Olsen, J., & Kirchler, E. (2021). Tax compliance is not fundamentally influenced by incidental emotions: An experiment. Economics of Governance, 22(4), 345–362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-021-00256-9
(✝ indicates shared first authorship)Book chapters
Enachescu, J., Puklavec, Ž., Bauer, C., Olsen, J., Kirchler, E., & Alm, J. (2020). Incidental emotions, integral emotions, and decisions to pay taxes. In L. Batrancea, S. Cevik, and M. M. Erdoğdu (eds.). Behavioral Public Finance: Individuals, Society, and the State (pp. 157–177). Routledge.
Truzka, A., Puklavec, Ž., & Kirchler, E. (2022). Nudging taxpayers to comply: Reflections about the effect of deterrence and non-deterrence behavioral interventions depending on taxpayers’ motivational postures. In Ü. R. Dayiogllu Erul (Ed.). Psikolojik Ve Sosyolojik Yönleriyle Vergilendirme / Psychological And Sociological Aspects Of Taxatıon (pp. 19–48). Kitap Yayınevi.