Primary Outcomes (end points)
The main, countervailing, hypotheses we test are:
H1: Those who actively take the money exert relatively higher effort for the charity compared to those who did not take the money – this would mean that moral licensing dominates the outcome.
H2: Those who actively take the money exert relatively lower effort for the charity compared to those who did not take the money – this would mean that the stability of social preferences dominates the outcome.
Our former experiment suggests that H2 holds.
Our primary outcomes are (i) is whether those who actively take the money exert relatively higher or lower effort for the charity compared to those who did not take the money, and (ii) how the impact of getting the money is affected by whether it’s the own active decision or a computer draw.
Our main regression is
PerformanceforCharity=β_0+β_1 MoneyTransferred+β_2 TreatGroup+β_3 (MoneyTransferred×TreatGroup)+β_4 PerformanceforOwnAccount+ Controls+ϵ
The main coefficient of interest is β_3 – if it is positive, this means that if the money was actively taken then subjects in the treatment group have higher outcomes when working for the charity, controlled for the outcome when working for their own account. A positive coefficient would hence point to the dominance of moral licensing (i.e. those who actively take the money subsequently exert higher effort for the charity), and a negative coefficient to the dominance of stable preferences.
What about the rest? As we include this interaction, the coefficient β_1 refers only to the case where the random draw has transferred the money. A positive coefficient β_1 would hence mean that unintentional unfairness increases pro-social effort. Respectively, the coefficient β_2 refers only to the case where the random draw did not transfer the money. We do not make any specific hypothesis about this case. Finally, β_4 is expected to be positive, as it can be seen as a proxy for capabilities and motivation.
In addition to the parametric analysis, we will perform Wilcoxon rank sum tests to compare the difference in the performance when working for the own and the charity’s account of
Those who took the money deliberately to those who deliberately did not take it
Those who got the money from the computer to those who did not get the money from the computer.
Those who took the money deliberately to those who got the money from the computer
Those who did deliberately not take the money to those who did not get the money from the computer.
We will also use Wilcoxon sign-rank test to compare performance in the two real effort tasks within-subject in each group.