Autonomous Motivation and Prosocial Behavior: a Natural Field Experiment

Last registered on May 18, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Autonomous Motivation and Prosocial Behavior: a Natural Field Experiment
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0010994
Initial registration date
February 23, 2023

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
March 08, 2023, 11:46 AM EST

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

Last updated
May 18, 2023, 10:36 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute (CERGE-EI)

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-02-27
End date
2023-10-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study examines whether volunteers provide more effort when they have more autonomy in choosing the volunteering task. In a natural field experiment, students of four public high schools in Albania will be asked to write awareness messages for one of the following causes: bullying, depression, and social inclusion of people with disabilities. Further, this study questions whether students will provide more effort because the choice allows them to raise awareness about the cause they like to support or whether it allows them to match their abilities with the task. Lastly, this study questions whether there are long-term effects of autonomy and whether autonomy can lead to more effort relative to the monetary compensation of volunteers. Treatments will vary in whether students will be allowed to choose the task or be matched with a random task, have their abilities matched with the task, and receive a large monetary reward for their effort.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Kouro, Theodor. 2023. "Autonomous Motivation and Prosocial Behavior: a Natural Field Experiment." AEA RCT Registry. May 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10994-2.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention will happen in two stages. In the first stage we will collect information from schools about the academic performance of students, age, gender, and a few questions about the social causes that they will be asked to raise awareness. These questions include their perceived awareness about each cause, perceived level of difficulty in raising awareness about each cause, perceived ability to raise awareness about each cause, previous volunteering experience, and 5 multiple-answer quiz questions for each of the cause. Students will be asked to choose the alternatives that they consider correct. The quiz helps to understand their overall knowledge about each cause/topic.

In the second stage, students will be asked to write awareness-raising messages against three social causes: depression, bullying and social exclusion of people with disabilities. Participants will be asked to provide their input in four different conditions, which are described in the experimental design. I partnered with the Observatory for the Rights of Children and Youth in Albania, and the intervention will happen at the same time that the NGO will promote in high-schools the U-Report social messaging platform, which is managed by UNICEF. That is, not only will students register and receive more information about the platform, but they will voluntarily provide input for it, by writing awareness-raising messages.

Both stages will be implemented in the classrooms of the four high-schools that will be part of this project. The Ministry of Education, Sports and Youth has already approved the promotion of U-Report in high-schools as well as the implementation of this research project. The Information and Data Protection Commissioner of Albania has also provided an approval to the Ministry concerning the data that will be collected, and the protection of students' anonymity (de-identification). Most importantly, CERGE-EI has issued the ethical approval for this project.

Intervention Start Date
2023-04-07
Intervention End Date
2023-04-14

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
O1. Total number of relevant awareness-raising messages.
)2. The share of messages that have high potential to be published on U-report
O.3 Overall quality of the relevant messages
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
O1: while students will have the freedom to write anything they believe it is valuable or not, what counts for this project is the total number of sentences that are related to the task. For example, a student who is asked to write awareness-raising messages against bulling, may write 10 sentences but only half are related to preventing bullying. Hence, his outcome will be 5 instead of 10.
O2. If the evaluators of these messages choose only 5 messages out of 10 that have a potential to be published, the outcome is 50%.
O3. The evaluators rate the quality of the written message on a 1-10 scale, where 1 means lowest quality, and 10 means highest quality.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
SO1. Willingness to volunteer in the future (Yes/No and e-mail provision)
SO2. Overall level of task enjoyment
SO3. Total number of awareness messages about another cause (urban pollution)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
SO1. (Yes/No and willingness to provide their e-mail for notifications in the future
SO2. Measured on a 0-10 scale, where 0 means "totally disliked the task", and 10 means "fully enjoyed the task"
SO3. Measured by the number of messages they write to prevent urban pollution.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Control group: students will be asked to volunteer by writing awareness-raising messages against one randomly chosen cause: depression, bullying or social exclusion of people with disabilities.

Choice treatment: students will be asked to volunteer by writing awareness-raising messages against the cause of their choice, including depression, bullying, and social exclusion of people with disabilities.

Ability matching treatment: students will be asked to volunteer by writing awareness-raising messages against the cause they feel more able to raise awareness. They will be asked to reveal their abilities for each cause prior to the intervention through the stage one survey. Specifically, they will be asked to indicate how able from a scale from 1-10 they feel about raising awareness for each of the following causes: depression, bullying, and social acceptance of people with disabilities.

Monetary reward: students will be asked to volunteer by writing awareness-raising messages against one randomly chosen cause: depression, bullying or social exclusion of people with disabilities. They will be told that the student in the class with more awareness-raising messages selected by the NGO to be posted in the U-Report social messaging platform, will receive a symbolic award of 20 Euros.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization will be done in office by a computer. The chosen randomization method is described by Alvaro Carril and it can be implemented in Stata using the randtreat command which randomly assign clusters to uneven treatment groups and deal with misfits. This method also allows for stratification based on school.
Randomization Unit
The randomization will be performed at the class level.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
148 classes
Sample size: planned number of observations
4500-5000 - it will depend on whether all students will be present in the class on both implementation days.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
The final treatment split is: 39 classes control, 43 classes choice treatment, 41 classes ability-matching treatment, 25 classes monetary reward. Note that the number of clusters in the monetary reward depended on funding.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education
IRB Approval Date
2023-01-16
IRB Approval Number
N/a

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials