Pre-Analysis Plan: What drives refugees’ location choices? Evidence from a conjoint experiment among Ukrainian refugees

Last registered on November 01, 2023

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Pre-Analysis Plan: What drives refugees’ location choices? Evidence from a conjoint experiment among Ukrainian refugees

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0012333

Initial registration date

October 20, 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

November 01, 2023, 2:35 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

Germany

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Panu Poutvaara

Affiliation

LMU Munich and ifo Institute

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Joop Adema

PI Affiliation

LMU Munich and ifo Institute

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Yvonne Giesing

PI Affiliation

LMU Munich and ifo Institute

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Lasha Chargaziia

PI Affiliation

LMU Munich and ifo Institute

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2023-11-15

End date

2024-01-31

Keywords

Crime, Violence, & Conflict, Labor, Post-conflict

Additional Keywords

Refugees, Migration, Destination country choice, Conjoint experiment, Integration

JEL code(s)

F22

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

Knowing how refugees choose their destination country helps to plan humanitarian assistance and integration policies. This Pre-Analysis Plan describes how we are going to study the relative importance of networks, social benefits, labor market opportunities, housing costs, knowledge of potential destination country language, and proximity to home in refugees’ destination country choice. We compare choices in forced-choice conjoint experiments among Ukrainian refugees in various European countries with their actual choices. Surveying Ukrainian refugees is well suited to compare stated and revealed preferences as they are given equal rights to temporary protection and labor market access in all EU countries.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Adema, Joop et al. 2023. "Pre-Analysis Plan: What drives refugees’ location choices? Evidence from a conjoint experiment among Ukrainian refugees." AEA RCT Registry. November 01. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12333-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Each respondent is shown three choices each between two hypothetical destination countries with given characteristics, and asked which country they would choose.

Intervention Start Date

2023-11-15

Intervention End Date

2024-01-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Three choices of hypothetical destination country with given characteristics per respondent.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Information on country in which the respondent actually resides, in terms of (1) whether the respondent expects it to be easy to find a job correspondig to own qualifications, (2) average net wage level (below or above 20,000 euros per year), (3) generosity of social benefits for unemployed refugees and (4) child benefits, (5) whether the respondent spoke the language, (6) whether the respondent had family or friends in the chosen country at the time or arrival, and (7) distance to Ukraine (For this, we divide the sample in three groups: those hosted in a country whose capital is less than 500 kilometer away from the Ukrainian border, between 500and 1000 kilometers and more than 1000 kilometer.)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Survey experiment (forced-choice conjoint)

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization of shown country characteristics is done by survey software, according to the rules specified in the PAP document.

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

There are no clusters in the typical sense of an RCT. The two hypothetical destinations vary along 8 dimensions. Given that every respondent has to make three hypothetical destination choices, we cluster standard errors on the individual level as in its absence the correlation between the responses of the same individual may lead to overstate precision.

Sample size: planned number of observations

About 1000 respondents in the Kantar Public survey and 3000-4000 respondents in our own survey.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

In each survey, each individual has an own randomization of the characteristics of the hypothetical destination countries in three pairs.

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

To infer the significance of our effect, we always use two-sided tests with α = 0.05. We aim to detect effect sizes of 5 percentage points (AMCE), which is smaller than effect sizes for access to welfare and labor market conditions in comparable studies (Ferwerda and Gest, 2021). We performed a power analysis using the R package cjpowR (Schuessler and Freitag, 2020), calculating the power with a combined sample size of 4,000 (1,000 for Survey I and 3,000 for survey II). For the combined sample, the statistical tests of the main effects for our 8 attributes when the true effect size is 5 percentage points have a power exceeding 99%. The power to detect internal interaction effects of 5 percentage effects is 97%. Subgroup analyses on a subsample of 20% (which is the share of men among Ukrainian refugees) of the full sample have a power of 93%. Hence, our studies are sufficiently powered to test aforementioned hypotheses.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB