Do Women and Men Respond Differently to Pay Ranges in Job Ads?

Last registered on July 08, 2024
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Do Women and Men Respond Differently to Pay Ranges in Job Ads?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0013163
Initial registration date
July 03, 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
July 08, 2024, 1:14 PM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Petra Nieken
Affiliation
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Jed DeVaro
PI Affiliation
California State University, East Bay
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-07-05
End date
2024-12-31
Keywords
Gender, Labor
Additional Keywords
gender pay gap, pay transparency, wage postings, job ads, labor market sorting, pay ranges
JEL code(s)
J16, J31, J62, J63, J68
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
In many U.S. states and around the world, regulations that require employers to post pay ranges in job ads are increasingly common. Often the stated motivation for these regulations is to improve labor-market outcomes for women relative to men. The goal of this project is twofold: First, it aims to discover whether differences in the size of pay ranges change the overall likelihood of accepting a job offer and the resulting worker performance. Second, the project aims to investigate whether women and men exhibit different behaviors. We conduct a randomized controlled trial using a large online crowd worker platform to study the potential impact of the size of pay ranges on a) the likelihood of accepting a job, b) the performance on the job, and c) the perceived deservingness and beliefs of the participants. We focus on gender differences in these outcomes. The treatments vary in the size of the pay range and the gender of the participants.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
DeVaro, Jed and Petra Nieken. 2024. "Do Women and Men Respond Differently to Pay Ranges in Job Ads?." AEA RCT Registry. July 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.13163-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The study will be conducted on Prolific. All individuals who are registered on the platform and satisfy the selection criteria will be eligible to participate. Our study aims to investigate the impact of the size of advertised pay ranges on a) the likelihood of accepting a job, b) the performance on the job, and c) the perceived deservingness and beliefs of the participants. The treatments will vary regarding the pay range that is provided to the participants and the gender of the participants.
Intervention Start Date
2024-07-08
Intervention End Date
2024-08-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Our primary outcome is the likelihood that a participant accepts a given wage offer.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Acceptance: Binary variable equaling 1 if the participants accept the wage offer and 0 otherwise.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
The performance on the job. The performance has two dimensions: quantity and quality
Stated deservingness
Belief about the average accepted payment by others
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Performance Quantity: Number of submitted fragments in the real effort typing task.
Performance Quality: We construct a quality score based on the Levenshtein edit distance
Deservingness: Answer to the question: Please tell us the amount of the extra payment (in GBP) that you think you deserve for working on the optional task.
Belief about the average payment accepted by others: Answer to the question: Other Prolific participants were also offered the option to do the optional typing task for an extra payment. For those participants who chose to do so, what do you think was the average value of their extra payments?

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We use a 2×2 design resulting in four treatments. First, we vary the information about the pay range. Second, we vary whether the participants identify themselves as men or women. The participants receive information about the pay range before they decide to accept or reject the optional typing task. The study will be executed on Prolific. We aim for a sample size of 1200.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
We will use the prescreening option by Prolific to ensure all men (and all women) sessions. We will randomly allocate the participants of one session to either the Narrow or the Wide treatment. The randomization within each session will be performed by the experimental software otree.
Randomization Unit
Experimental session
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
N.A.
Sample size: planned number of observations
1200
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
We have four treatments, with 300 participants in each treatment. This amounts to 1200 participants in the whole study.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
We aim for a total sample size of 1200 observations to ensure sufficient power.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
California State University, East Bay IRB
IRB Approval Date
2023-12-11
IRB Approval Number
CSUEB-IRB-2023-160
Analysis Plan