Non-willigness to lead and social preference

Last registered on March 15, 2024

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Non-willigness to lead and social preference

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0013041

Initial registration date

March 11, 2024

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

March 15, 2024, 6:58 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Region

Hampshire

Primary Investigator

Name

Paul-Emile Mangin

Affiliation

University of Portsmouth

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Wolfgang Luhan

PI Affiliation

University of Portsmouth

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2024-02-14

End date

2024-05-31

Keywords

Behavior, Electoral

Additional Keywords

Behavioural economics, experimental economics, leadership, non-willingness to lead, social preference.

JEL code(s)

D72, C91, C92

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

Willingness to lead is not homogeneously distributed in the population. There is extensive research on the attributes of a good leader, and on how willingness to lead impacts leadership. But not a lot of research focuses on those who do not want to lead, the reasons why they do not put themselves forward, and if they would actually be better leaders than those who do not want to lead.
I want to study the personality traits of those who do not want to lead, and if they would make different decisions for others than those who seek power. More precisely, I focus on distribution preference, i.e. the trade-off between efficiency (sum of individual payoffs), equality, and maximin (maximisation of the smallest payoff). Do individuals who do not want to lead take more equal or efficient decisions?

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Luhan, Wolfgang and Paul-Emile Mangin. 2024. "Non-willigness to lead and social preference." AEA RCT Registry. March 15. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.13041-1.0

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

I investigate if people who want power the least would make different distribution decisions than people who seek it.

Intervention Start Date

2024-02-14

Intervention End Date

2024-05-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

We will collect data from an incentivized online experiment to answer the following questions:
- RQ1: Do people who do not want to lead have different personality traits than those who want?
H1: people with low willingness to lead are more pro-social
- RQ2: How does not wanting to lead impact decision-makers distribution preferences?
H2: people with low WTL are more likely to make egalitarian distribution decisions.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

What is the impact of age, disposable income, gender (see Eckel et al., 2021; Grossman et al., 2019), field of study, native language on participants’ decisions?

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We will use an in-lab survey experiment for data collection, implemented at the BaL BARE Laboratory.

Experimental Design Details

The data collection will be conducted using an in-lab survey. We will recruit staff and student participants from Portsmouth University. This will be achieved by reaching out participants from the UoP BARE Lab subject pool and invite them to participate in the experiment. This procedure has been approved previously (Ethics number BAL/2019/11/MURAD).
As is the norm in economic experiments, students will be welcomed to the lab and seated at individual workstations separated by blinds. The instructions will be distributed and read aloud, allowing time for questions before the start of the experiment. All procedures detailed below are common knowledge and will be explained to all participants in full.

We will use Ztree to implement the actual experiment. This experiment will be paired with another one that is currently under review for ethical approval. No interaction between the two experiments is planned, except for the fact participants will receive one showup fee for attending the two experiments. General instructions on lab rules will also be only announced once. The experiment design consists of the following elements:
A. SVO (collected in the previous experiment)
B. Questionnaire, including several willingness lead item and a Big 5 personality test
C. Allocation decision (Engelmann & Strobel, 2004), see section 7.1 for details
In B., participants will make incentivised choices that impact others’ payoffs. No deception will be used. Instructions are in attachment to this form.
D. A Willingness to pay to apply their decision in C, used as an incentivised willingness to lead measure.

Randomization Method

Randomisation is conducted at individual level, when registering to the experiment and attending the sessions.

Randomization Unit

Individual.

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

None.

Sample size: planned number of observations

108

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

324

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

We require 108 independent observations per treatment, 324 in total. This number has been computed using G*Power, for a chi-squared test with alpha=5%, beta=20% and a medium effect size w of 0.3.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB