Eliciting Social Norms

Last registered on April 13, 2023

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Eliciting Social Norms

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0011132

Initial registration date

April 06, 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

April 13, 2023, 3:49 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Pauline MADIES

Affiliation

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Stephanie W Wang

PI Affiliation

University of Pittsburgh

PI Name

David B Huffman

PI Affiliation

University of Pittsburgh

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2023-04-11

End date

2024-04-20

Keywords

Behavior

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

In the experimental literature, social norms are identified by using the method developed by Krupka and Weber (2013).
We plan to replicate the Krupka and Weber experimental design for eliciting social norms using coordination games with a simple modification to test whether this modification leads to similar or different elicited norms.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Huffman, David B, Pauline MADIES and Stephanie W Wang. 2023. "Eliciting Social Norms ." AEA RCT Registry. April 13. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11132-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

In their seminal paper, Krupka and Weber (2013) develop an incentivized elicitation method for identifying social norms that uses simple coordination games. Participants are incentivized to match with the modal answer in their judgments.

In this study, we want to test whether the elicited social norms will be different if we ask one group to state the social appropriateness of various actions in different allocation games and another group to guess these social appropriateness ratings rather than asking the same group to complete these two tasks in one. Participants from the latter group will be incentivized to guess the social appropriateness rating most frequently given by participants in the former group. We will test whether this elicitation method leads to similar or different elicited norms than Krupka and Weber (2013).

We will also collect data on demographic attributes, social preferences and cognitive ability from our participants at the end of the experiment to test whether these characteristics are correlated with elicited social norms.

Intervention Start Date

2023-04-11

Intervention End Date

2024-04-20

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

We will collect social appropriateness ratings collected from the first group of participants. We will also collect guesses about these appropriateness ratings from the second group of participants. Lastly, we will collect information on demographic characteristics, social preferences and cognitive ability scores from both groups.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We use a between- subject design in an individual decision-making study. Each participant is randomly assigned to either an incentivized or an unincentivized session and is paid a participation fee of $7.
Each participant will first read the descriptions of a series of situations. These descriptions correspond to situations in which one person, "Individual A", must make an allocation decision. For each situation, participants will be given a description of the allocation decision faced by Individual A. This description will include several possible choices available to Individual A.

After they read the description of the decision, participants in the unincentivized sessions will report the social appropriateness of each possible allocation decision on a scale. Participants in these sessions will be asked to report their ratings as truthfully as possible, based on their opinions of what constitutes socially appropriate or socially inappropriate behavior.

In the incentivized sessions, participants will be asked to guess the rating most frequently given by participants in the unincentivized sessions. At the end of the session, we will randomly select one of the allocation situations. For this situation, we will also randomly select one of the possible choices that Individual A could make. Thus, we will select both a situation and one possible choice at random.
For the choice selected, participants will receive an additional $10 if their guess corresponds to the answer most frequently given by participants in the unincentivized sessions.

At the end of both types of sessions, participants will be asked to complete a post-experiment survey including questions on demographic characteristics, social preferences and cognitive ability.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

computer program

Randomization Unit

session

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

300

Sample size: planned number of observations

300

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

225 participants in the incentivized sessions, 75 in the unincentivized sessions.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

We use the effect sizes suggested by Krupka and Weber (2013) to test whether our incentivized method yields similar or different elicited norms. We use effect sizes and variability in their data to calculate the sample size needed to generate >85% power to test this hypothesis.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB