Meaning it's more acceptable to not comply with cultural standards: i.e. keep standard hours, have a job, not marry/have kids, or whatever else the standards of behavior are.
I'm not convinced though that developing countries are actually lower compliance but that's what the OP means.
> I'm not convinced though that developing countries are actually lower compliance
They aren't, and there is far less opportunity to escape compliance. Deviation is an exclusive privilege of the prevailing strong men. Everyone else tows the community line and occupies their time scrutinizing precisely how well others are towing it as well. The romantic fiction that there is some great liberty in such places is a form of noble savage fantasy that emerges among those that have fully inculcated the contempt for their own culture they were trained to have.
It heavily depends on what exactly are you supposed to be compliant with. As in, developing countries tend to be less organized with all kind of rules being broken routinely. With people used to dysfunction, bad service, disorganization, bad behavior.
In a lot of ways, it is more tolerant of faults, because developed word demands perfection.
But then, when it turns bad it can be really bad. And it is not tolerant of everything, many freedoms and choices acceptable in developed word are treated with massive hostility.
Clearly, there's a lot of variation inside a country too. I'm thinking urban vs. rural but you can probably point out more specific ways it differs.
Maybe it's even possible to think of this on a class level? Certain upper middle class societies being very strict about how you should organize your life to conform.
Not the OP, but I assume they mean the requirement by society on how well individuals conform to the expectations of that society. In high compliance societies, individuals are ostracized / punished for non-conformance - think atheists in a religious society. In low conformance societies, individuals are able to maintain a high level of privacy or society is more tolerant of divergence.
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