Building social cohesion through virtual intergroup contact: Mobile app experiment in Bangladesh

We will develop an original mobile game application (app) and conduct a randomized experiment in Bangladesh. In the game, players will form a group and collaboratively manage a fruit farm.

In the game, three players will form a group and collaboratively manage a fruit farm. Each group member’s information is limited to only their nationality (Bangladeshi or Rohingya), while all other details remain anonymous. In addition, the game does not include any communication features, preventing players from interacting with other group members.
The game is simple, where the only task is to open the app and harvest the fruits that appear on the tree by tapping the screen. The farm in the game hosts around 24 fruit trees, and on average, one fruit grows on any of these trees every minute. If players do not harvest the fruits, they continue to accumulate on the trees. However, each tree can bear a maximum of 6-7 fruits; after reaching this limit, no additional fruits will appear. The game interface displays both the total harvest of the group and the individual harvests of each of the three members.
Players engage in this game with their group for five days, which constitutes one round. In total, there are six rounds to be played, with group members being randomly shuffled at the beginning of each round. At the end of each round, players receive rewards based on the total fruits harvested by their group. The maximum group reward per round is set at 900 Bangladesh Taka (BDT), with a total of 5,000 fruits generated in every round. Consequently, the value of each fruit is set at 0.18 BDT. Regardless of individual contributions, the total reward is divided equally among the three members. Actual payments are made in a lump sum after the completion of all six rounds and once all rewards are finalized. The total rewards will be transferred through bKash, an electronic payment system commonly used in Bangladesh.
Before the game begins, participants will be informed that Rohingya players may be included in their team. They will also be told that computer players (bots) may be in the team. In reality, all Rohingya players are bots because of the practical difficulties in invloving Rohingya refugees. However, this information will not be disclosed to the participants. In our pre-test, the majority of participants believed that the Rohingya players were real human players.

2023-12-25

2024-02-03

The primary outcome variable is the behavior in the JoD minigame.

In the JoD, we ask the participants how much they are willing to reduce the donation for Rohingya refugees at a personal cost. Participants will be informed that a a donation of 400 BDT will be made to an international non-governmental organization (NGO) working in the refugee camp. However, the identity and specific activities of the NGO will not be disclosed. Following this, participants will be given the choice to use a portion of their 100 BDT survey participation fee to reduce the donation amount. The payment is in discrete choices of 0, 20, 40, 60, or 80 BDT, with every unit of BDT paid resulting in five times that amount deducted from the donation. This amount is indeed deducted from their survey participation fee of 100 BDT. As the JoD section will be included in both baseline and endline surveys, we can create a panel data set for the JoD.

We plan to recruit up to 2,004 smartphone users in Bangladesh. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the four treatment arms or the control group prior to the beginning of the game. Each group will consist of 400 to 402 participants.

Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the four treatment arms or the control group prior to the beginning of the game. Each group will consist of 400 to 402 participants. The randomization is at the player level without any stratification. In the control group, each team is formed exclusively with three Bangladeshi human participants. In the control group, each team is formed exclusively with three Bangladeshi human participants.
For the first treatment arm (T1), teams are composed of two Bangladeshi participants and one Rohingya bot player. The bot’s strength is adjusted in real time based on the average performance of the control group. In the second treatment (T2), teams consist of two Bangladeshi participants and one Rohingya bot for three randomly selected game rounds. For the remaining three rounds, teams are made up of three Bangladeshi human participants. In the third treatment (T3), teams consist of two Bangladeshi participants and one Rohingya bot for all the six rounds, similar to T1. However, the bot’s strength is increased by 30% than the average of the control group in the first round. From the second to the sixth round, as the average harvests of the control group are anticipated to decrease, the bot's strength will be adjusted, increasing up to 50% accordingly. In the fourth treatment (T4), we will not change the team composition throughout the six rounds, contrasting with the weekly shuffling in other groups. Teams in T4 include two Bangladeshi participants and one Rohingya bot, with the bot's strength set to the average level.
The randomization will be done in the app using random numbers, the compliance is expected to be 100%. The participants will not be informed of their assigned treatment status. After the completion of the game and endline survey, we will debrief the treated participants to avoid any future conflict. We will inform them that all the Rohingya players are computer bots and that the strength of the bots is adjusted based on other players’s actual performance.

The randomization will be done in the app using random numbers.

The randomization is at the player level without any stratification.

No

2,004 smartphone users

2,004 smartphone users

Each group will consist of 400 to 402 participants.

In our previous study (Higuchi et al. 2023), we conducted the Joy-of-Destruction (JoD) game in 2020 with 1,679 households in Bangladesh, using the same payment options as planned for this study. The mean payment observed was 23.9 BDT, with a standard deviation of 28.1. For the current study, we have calculated the power and minimum detectable effect (MDE). With an established false discovery rate of 0.05 and a power of 0.80, our analysis suggests that for the comparison between Treatment 1 and the control group, having approximately 400 participants in each group is optimal. This leads to a planned total sample size of 800. With this sample size, the estimated MDE is 0.20, which translates to about 5.6 BDT, based on the results from our previous study. We consider this MDE to be reasonable for the current experiment. Our previous research demonstrated that being one standard deviation farther from the refugee camp increased the amount paid in the JoD game by up to 7.5 BDT. Therefore, an MDE of 5.6 BDT, with the set parameters for false discovery rate and power, seems within a sensible range to detect significant effects in our study. Higuchi, Y., K. Higashida, M.M. Hossain, M. Sujauddin, R. Takahashi, and K. Tanaka. 2023. From Hospitality to Hostility: Impact of the Rohingya Refugee Influx on the Sentiments of Host Communities. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4348051