Rule Following and Cooperation - A within-subjects design

2024-12-10

2024-12-11

The number of tokens placed in the blue bucket is the primary outcome of interest as it indicates the level of subjects’ rule following and cooperative behaviour, respectively. Within the CRISP paradigm this is our measure of Compliance/Cooperation. We elicit subjects’
conditional allocations to the blue bucket via the strategy method to capture their Conditional Preferences and follow the protocol of Thoni and Volk (2018) in classifying subjects’ propensity to cooperate (i.e., their attitudes in the ABC approach). We elicit subjects Normative and Descriptive Beliefs (jointly their Social Expectations) and their personal norms (capturing Respect for Rules).

Subjects will be randomly allocated to one treatment, which varies the presence and nature of a rule and the presence of a public good (treatments use an adapted version of the task introduced in Kimbrough and Vostroknutov (2018)). The five between-subjects treatments are
outlined below. For all subjects, the within-subjects element of the experiment is completed for their assigned treatment.

Common Elements: In all treatment’s subjects receive an endowment of 5 tokens which they can allocate between a yellow and blue bucket. The yellow bucket always offers a higher return to self.

1. No Rule: In this treatment there is no rule or no public good component. We use this treatment as a benchmark for comparison, allowing us to determine the relative importance of factors within the CRISP framework for explaining costly rule following and voluntary cooperation by adding elements to this treatment.
2. Baseline RFT: This treatment introduces a nonenforced personally costly rule stating, “The rule is to place the tokens in the blue bucket”, allowing us to determine the role respect for rules plays in driving behaviour.
3. Baseline PGG: This treatment introduces a linear public goods game structure to the task as subjects are (post-hoc) placed in groups of 4. Incentives (i.e., return to self from own action) are equalised in this social task with respect to the individualistic tasks. The marginal per capita return is set at 0.5 with the allocations of all group members to the blue bucket doubled and distributed equally among the four group
members irrespective of their own contribution.
4. PGG Rule: This treatment adds a nonenforced rule to the Baseline PGG treatment. The wording of the rule is the same as in the Baseline RFT treatment, stating “The rule is to place the tokens in the blue bucket”.
5. PGG Social Rule: This treatment modifies the wording of the rule in PGG Rule to include an explicitly stated purpose, stating “The rule is to place the tokens in the blue bucket because it helps the other group members”.

Not available

Subjects will be randomly allocated into treatments by the LIONESS Lab software (Giamattei et al., 2020). We randomise subjects until each treatment has reached the desired sample size of 140. Once a treatment has achieved a sample size of 140 future subjects will no longer be randomised to that treatment.

Subjects are randomly allocated to one treatment. The order in which they complete the Behaviour Strategy Method Experiment and the Belief Strategy Method Experiment is also randomised.

Yes

As each subject makes multiple decisions, we will cluster at the level of the individual.

We will collect 700 observations in total, 140 per treatment (i.e., 140 in No Rule, 140 in Baseline RFT, 140 in Baseline PGG, 140 in PGG Rule, and 140 in PGG Social Rule). Exclusion Criteria: We will exclude any incomplete data, and consider the first 140 complete submissions in each treatment from subjects who submitted a completion code on Prolific. Subjects’ who answer comprehension questions incorrectly 2 or more times in No Rule and Baseline RFT (3 or more times in Baseline PGG, PGG Rule, and PGG Social Rule) are screened out of the study. In our analysis we will exclude: (i) subjects’ who self-report that hey did not pay attention during the study* (ii) subjects in Baseline PGG, PGG Rule, or PGG Social Rule who completed the study in 10 minutes or less (iii) subjects in No Rule or Baseline RFT who completed the study in 8 minutes or less. After applying these exclusion criteria if the sample size in any treatment drops below 140 we will recruit additional sub- jects to make up the difference in the impacted treatment (e.g., if the sample drops to 139 in No Rule, we will recruit 1 additional subject fulfilling the aforementioned non-exclusion criteria to the No Rule treatment). *This is based on subjects’ response to the following question: “The following question does not affect your payment, and is only used for data quality purposes. Please indicate the extent to which you agree with the statement: Throughout the study I was paying sufficient attention.” with response options Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree. We will exclude those who do not indicate Agree or Strongly Agree.

We will collect 700 observations in total, 140 per treatment (i.e., 140 in No Rule, 140 in Baseline RFT, 140 in Baseline PGG, 140 in PGG Rule, and 140 in PGG Social Rule).