AEA RCT Registry

Field	Before	After
Trial Status	in_development	completed
Last Published	March 18, 2024 02:18 AM	March 23, 2026 10:49 AM
Study Withdrawn		No
Intervention Completion Date		June 30, 2024
Data Collection Complete		Yes
Public Data URL		https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XMW7T
Is there a restricted access data set available on request?		No
Program Files		Yes
Program Files URL		https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XMW7T
Data Collection Completion Date		June 30, 2024
Is data available for public use?		Yes

Field	Before	After
Paper Abstract		Since ignorance can serve as an excuse for selfish behavior, people sometimes avoid learning about possible negative externalities of their actions. In social situations, however, others might provide the information anyway. How do potential informers affect willful ignorance and the resulting social outcomes? We introduce a third-party potential informer into the moral wiggle-room game. Almost half of the dictators avoided information only to have it imposed upon them by the informer. Most of these unwillingly-informed dictators revised their behavior to benefit the recipient, even at a cost to themselves. While knowledge of the informer’s presence did not change dictators’ propensity to seek information, a subtle change in the experimental choice interface did: The share of dictators choosing ignorance was more than halved when dictator’s ignorance and allocation choices were made in two separate decision screens rather than a single one.
Paper Citation		Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Available online 21 March 2026, 103330 In Press, Journal Pre-proof.
Paper URL		https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2026.103330

Fields Changed