A multi sport experiment examining the influence of economic status on sports participation.

Last registered on May 09, 2024
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
A multi sport experiment examining the influence of economic status on sports participation.
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0013430
Initial registration date
April 29, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
May 09, 2024, 1:55 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

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Primary Investigator

Name
Cornel Nesseler
Affiliation
UiS
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Carlos Gomez-Gonzalez
PI Affiliation
University of Zurich
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PI Name
Helmut Dietl
PI Affiliation
University of Zurich
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PI Name
Petr Parshakov
PI Affiliation
HSE Perm
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PI Name
Thadeu Gasparetto
PI Affiliation
Leeds Beckett University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-05-15
End date
2024-09-01
Keywords
Behavior, Other, Welfare
Additional Keywords
sport participation, amateur sports, discrimination
JEL code(s)
C93, J15, Z29
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
Ethnic discrimination is a global and persistent phenomenon, but much research is needed to understand the mechanism behind differential treatment (Bertrand & Duflo, 2017). In this project, we perform a large-scale field experiment in Germany with a twofold aim.

First, we aim to analyze if ethnic discrimination changes when individuals try accessing different sports clubs, namely football, tennis, shooting, handball, golf, horse riding, and table tennis. We contact coaches via email asking to join a trial training with a native- or a foreign-sounding name. The emails are identical, and the response rate to the different groups can provide evidence of discrimination. The experimental design is very similar to previous field experiments we performed in several European countries (Gomez-Gonzalez et al., 2021).

Second, we aim to identify how the intersection of ethnicity with socioeconomic status influences the response rate. The signal mentions the cost of membership fees to test the influence of conflict theory, which is highly debated in the literature (Putnam, 2007).

For this we contact amateur clubs in the following sports: football, tennis, shooting, handball, golf, horse riding, and tabletennis
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Dietl, Helmut et al. 2024. "A multi sport experiment examining the influence of economic status on sports participation.." AEA RCT Registry. May 09. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.13430-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The English translation of the baseline message is as follows:

Subject: Training session
Hello,
I would like to join a XXX club to make friends and practice the sport. I already have some experience but I'm not a professional. Is it possible to come over?
Thank you very much,
Name

The name is either female or male. We use the three names for each group for each nationality. Thus, six names for German-sounding names (three for males and three for females) and six names for each of the three largest foreign groups in Germany: Turkish-, Syrian-, and Ukrainian-sounding names.

We include another treatment that includes another sentence which focuses on the fee for participating:

Subject: Training session
Hello,
I would like to join a XXX club to make friends and practice the sport. I already have some experience but I'm not a professional. Is it possible to come over?
Could you tell me also how much the membership fee is?
Thank you very much,
Name

Intervention Start Date
2024-05-15
Intervention End Date
2024-09-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The main variable of interest is the response of each club.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
As in previous research (Gomez-Gonzalez et al., 2021), responses are categorized as (1) no response or rejection, (2) positive response, (3) positive response with additional inquiry (e.g., "what position do you play?"; "where did you play before?"). To examine the response rate, a binary variable that takes a value of zero for no responses and rejections and one for positive responses and positive responses with additional inquiries is preferred. The email shows only interest in joining a trial training session and avoids references to further attributes.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
We focus on seven of the ten most popular sports in Germany. We want to examine how the primary outcome differs between the sports. We want to examine in addition to that how the two treatments in each sport influence the response.
Finally, we perform a survey before the start of the experiment in which we ask participants to assess if the names sound foreign, if the names are either female or male, if they associate a religion with the names, and what the average skin color of this names is.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We want to compare the response rate for people who contact a sports club. We compare the response rate for people with a typical German- and foreign-sounding name (for the three largest foreign groups). Additionally, we focus on a treatment in which the fake applicant asks how high the club membership fee is. Finally, we compare if these responses differ between sports.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
We use block randomization by state and sport. This ensures that individual names are not overrepresented in sports or areas. We use Stata and the set seed command to make the randomization process reproducible.
Randomization Unit
One unit is a club.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
We plan to have around 1500 observations per sport. However, for three clubs we expect to have fewer observations (shooting, handball, and golf).
Sample size: planned number of observations
We expect to have around 8500 observations.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1500 observations by sport.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
In a previous study (Gomez-Gonzalez, 2021) the response rate for German-sounding names was 0.67 and 0.53 for foreign-sounding names. Assuming a similar response rate for this study (with an alpha 0.05), we need around 329 observations per group. As we have have two groups (foreign and native) and two treatments (asking for membership fee, not asking for membership fee) we need around 1316 observations per sport.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
The Human Subjects Committee of the Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology at the University of Zurich
IRB Approval Date
2024-04-23
IRB Approval Number
OEC IRB # 2024-045
Analysis Plan