Experimental Design Details
There are two types of subjects in our experiment: remote workers (R) and office workers (O). Remote workers are subjects who participate online in a location of their choice any time in a block of 24 hours. Office workers are subjects who also participate online, but at a pre-specified time and location in a university computer laboratory. In the experiment we use the following phrasing to introduce types: There are two types of participants in this experiment: 1. Those that participate in a computer lab at Ohio University at a designated time (LAB PARTICIPANTS) 2. Those that participate in a location of their choice (e.g. in their apartment, at a coffee shop, in the library, etc.) at any time within a block of 24 hours (TELECOMMUTERS).
Participants are asked to complete a real effort typing task. Each task requires typing a 20-character string of letters and numbers. Subjects are not allowed to continue to the next string until the current string is typed correctly. The same sequence of random strings is used across rounds. The work is performed on an online platform which guides all participants through the experiment. The experiment is self-guided for both office workers and remote workers to ensure that the work platform and information given to all participants is identical. After a set of instructions and an unpaid practice work exercise, the paid portion of the experiment begins with an individual work round, followed by two team work rounds. The experiment ends with a basic survey.
The individual work round lasts for 5 minutes. Decisions are framed as submitting completed tasks to an individual account, which pays $0.10 per correct task. As an outside leisure option, subjects are instructed that they can browse the web, or engage in any other activity besides the typing task. Given their flexibility of participation, remote workers have a wider range of alternative activities than office workers.
Following the individual round, all subjects enter into the two team work rounds, each lasting 20 minutes. In each team round, a subject is randomly paired with two others for a team of three. All members in a team perform work individually using the typing task used in the individual round. The payment scheme in the team rounds includes the individual account seen in the first round that continues to pay $0.10 per correct task, and also includes a team account. In the minimum effort payment sessions, the team account pays $0.18 to the minimum number of correct tasks contributed by a team member. In the revenue sharing sessions, each correct task completed for the team pays $0.18 to the team, and this is equally divided between the team members creating a social dilemma common in these pay schemes. A subject chooses, in real time, to contribute the completed task to the individual account or the team account. Subjects are again instructed that they can browse the web, or engage in any other activity besides the typing task, and they are informed that their partners have this same option.
Our main treatment is the location type of partner assignment in team rounds. In one team round, subjects, who are either O or R type, are paired with two remote workers (RR) and in the other team round, they are paired with two office workers (OO). To control for order effects, in some sessions subjects are paired with two remote workers first and in the remaining sessions subjects are paired with two office workers first. The locational composition of every team member in both rounds is announced prior to the beginning of the team work rounds so that subjects know the location composition of the team they are participating with in the upcoming rounds prior to the start of the first team round. During the team rounds, they are also given a reminder about the location of their current team members at the top of their screen. All other feedback is restricted, including team payoffs. To accomplish the matching scheme where the subjects of interest are partnered in team rounds with two office workers (OO) and then two remote workers (RR), we recruited an additional pool of subjects to serve as partners. Partner subjects include both office worker and remote worker types and the basic structure of the experiment is identical to the primary subjects other than the location of teammates.