Consumption habits in segregated urban environments

The intervention will consist of a tour of North and East Tulsa. Participants allocated to the treatment group will meet at a common gathering point and be divided into buses. Each bus will have a professional tour guide who will introduce participants to the history of North and East Tulsa. All tour guides will be trained to provide participants with the same amount and type of information based on a predefined script. After the guided tour, all buses will stop at a designated location where a selection of local food shops, bars, pubs, and restaurants will set up stands to provide samples of typical foods, opportunities for interaction with local vendors, and an immersive experience of the neighborhood's culture.

Intervention timeline

9:00 AM - Experience Tulsa Team arrive at 3 N Cheyenne offices. Coffee and breakfast will be provided for staff.

9:30 AM - Staff walks over to the Parkway parking lot at the intersection of Cheyenne and Archer. There will be 8 buses, 4 for the treatment and 4 for the control.

10:00 AM - Participants will begin arriving at the Parkway parking lot at Archer and Cheyenne and be loaded into their buses.
Staff will make sure participants will be promptly allocated to the treatment and control to avoid any contamination.

10:30 AM - Buses will depart. Each treatment bus will have a designated tour guide aboard.
Treatment tour
The Treatment Group buses will separate into two groups. Bus 1 & 2 will be Group A and Bus 3 & 4 will be Group B. Each group will have equal numbers of participants (125 max).
Group A:
10:30 AM - 11:15 AM - The group will go on a guided tour of North Tulsa with stops in the following locations.
- The intersection of Greenwood and Archer (23 N Greenwood Ave)
- The Greenwood Cultural Center (322 N Greenwood Ave)
- Oasis Fresh Market (1725 N Peoria Ave)
- North Point Shopping Center (205 E Pine St)
- Big 10 Ballroom (1624 E Apache St)
11:15 AM - Arrive at Big 10 Ballroom for Vendor Fair
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM - Engage with the North Tulsa Vendor Market. Participants will be given two tickets, each worth $10 to spend at the vendor market. They can be spent at any of the vendor stands for food, beverage, etc. Participants can walk around, learn about various vendors and their brick and mortar locations.
12:00 PM - 12:15 PM - Group A will load up on buses.
12:15 PM - Depart North Tulsa for East Tulsa
12:30 - 1:00 PM - The group will go on a driving Tour of East Tulsa, with the following stops:
- Plaza Santa Cecilia (2160 S Garnett Rd)
- Nam Hai Market (11528 E 21st St)
- La Hacienda (3114 E Pine St)
- Garnett Event Center (2117 S Garnett Rd)
1:00 PM - Arrive at Garnett Event Center
1:00 PM - 1:45 PM - Engage with the East Tulsa Vendor Market. Participants will be given two tickets, each worth $10 to spend at the vendor market. They can be spent at any of the vendor stands for food, beverage, etc. Participants can walk around, learn about various vendors and their brick and mortar locations.
1:45 PM - 2:00 PM - Participants load the bus
2:00 PM - 2:15 PM - Drive back to Parkway parking lot
2:15 PM - Participants depart and the experience concludes

Group B:
10:30 AM - 11:15 AM - The group will go on a driving Tour of East Tulsa, with the following stops:
- Plaza Santa Cecilia (2160 S Garnett Rd)
- Nam Hai Market (11528 E 21st St)
- La Hacienda (3114 E Pine St)
- Garnett Event Center (2117 S Garnett Rd)
11:15 AM - Arrive at Garnett Event Center
11:15 AM - 12:00 PM - Engage with the East Tulsa Vendor Market. Participants will be given two tickets, each worth $10 to spend at the vendor market. They can be spent at any of the vendor stands for food, beverage, etc. Participants can walk around, learn about various vendors and their brick and mortar locations.
12:00 PM - 12:15 PM - Group B will load back onto their buses
12:15 PM - 1:00 PM - The group will go on a guided tour of North Tulsa with stops in the following locations.
- The intersection of Greenwood and Archer (23 N Greenwood Ave)
- The Greenwood Cultural Center (322 N Greenwood Ave)
- Oasis Fresh Market (1725 N Peoria Ave)
- North Point Shopping Center (205 E Pine St)
- Big 10 Ballroom (1624 E Apache St)
1:00 PM - Arrive at Big 10 Ballroom for Vendor Fair
1:00 PM - 1:45 PM - Engage with the North Tulsa Vendor Market. Participants will be given two tickets, each worth $10 to spend at the vendor market. They can be spent at any of the vendor stands for food, beverage, etc. Participants can walk around, learn about various vendors and their brick and mortar locations.
1:45 PM - 2:00 PM - Participants load the bus
2:00 PM - 2:15 PM - Drive back to Parkway parking lot
2:15 PM - Participants depart and the experience concludes

Control tour

10:45 AM - Control group arrives at Philbrook Museum of Art (2727 S Rockford Rd)

10:45 AM - 11:00 AM - Buses unload and groups are assigned out to various tour guides in groups of 15.

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM - Groups tour Philbrook museum!

12:45 PM - Control groups complete tours and load backup onto buses. They will return to the Parkway parking lot and their cars to conclude the experience

2024-11-09

2024-11-10

The primary outcomes that we plan to analyze in this study include, among other variables:
• Whether participants are more likely to consume in North and East Tulsa (Extensive Margin)
• The amount of money spent in North and East Tulsa (Intensive Margin)
• Whether the intervention changes their consumption habits and the reasons for spending money in different neighborhoods within Tulsa

We plan to collect and analyze two sets of data:
(1) survey data collected on a weekly basis and
(2) pre-paid credit card transaction records.
The survey data will provide information on whether individuals spend their weekly budget, where they spent it, and the motivations behind their consumption behavior. The credit card transaction records will offer detailed information on specific expenditures and the geographical patterns of individual consumption. Because the data collected are personal and/or sensitive, we will access them only in anonymized form from the data owner, Downtown Tulsa Partnership.

We hypothesize that treated participants will exhibit more pronounced changes in their consumption patterns compared to individuals in the control group. These changes should manifest as increased consumption in the ethnically segregated neighborhoods of North and East Tulsa. This hypothesis is rooted in contact theory, which posits that intergroup contact can reduce prejudice.

As a secondary outcome we plan to investigate whether the length of residence in Tulsa moderates the effect of the treatment, with more recent migrants exhibiting more pronounced changes in their consumption patterns due to being more open-minded and less entrenched in local communities.

Participants will be followed for four consecutive weeks during which we will monitor their consumption patterns within Tulsa. After the first two weeks, the treatment group will participate in a guided tour of North and East Tulsa, including a social gathering event involving local shops and restaurants. The intervention will be highly experiential and will leverage two main mechanisms: (a) providing information about the history of North and Est Tulsa to familiarize participants with the rich background of these areas and stimulate their curiosity; and (b) facilitating connections with local vendors by creating opportunities for interactions during a dedicated event. During this social event, participants will have the opportunity to taste ethnic foods, interact with local business owners, and immerse themselves in the culture of the neighborhood. In contrast, the control group will participate in a tour of a local museum downtown during the same half-day. This museum tour will serve as a placebo treatment, ensuring that participants are not exposed to any information or direct contact with the areas of North and East Tulsa.
To gather a detailed understanding of changes in consumption patterns in the treatment group relative to the control group, participants will receive $50 via a prepaid credit card at the beginning of each of the four experimental weeks. This amount can be spent on groceries, restaurants, and local shops and amenities, while online purchases will not be eligible. Any unspent amounts will be withdrawn at the end of each week. During each week, we will collect two types of data:
• Transaction records from the prepaid credit card, including details on the type of expense and the location of each transaction.
• Survey records regarding their consumption patterns during the week, including information on how much and where they spent the money, the reasons for their spending, and if they did not spend the money, the reasons why, along with their willingness to eat, drink, or shop at those locations again.
These data will serve as the foundation for constructing the key dependent variables of our empirical investigation.

The experimental design entails two different groups of participants (treatment and control) are randomly assigned using a random draw in STATA 18.0.

Individual level randomization (50%) stratified based on the local organization responsible for participants' recruitment (Tulsa Remote vs Downtown Tulsa Partnership)

No

0

214 individuals

107 in treatment group; 107 in control group

To define the total number of participants, we conservatively set the minumun threshold to 214 participants based on power calculations using F-test ANOVA (repeated measures, within-between interactions) with the following parameters: α error probability = 0.05, power (1 − β) = 0.95, number of groups = 2, and number of measurements = 4. For the effect size, we rely on the size effects conventionally defined by Cohen (2013). The minimum target sample of 214 observations is expected to provide sufficient power to detect an effect size of η² ≥ 0.01 (approximately equal to d=0.2), which corresponds to a small effect size base on Cohen (2013).