The effect of paternalistic decisions on children’s self-esteem and long-term decision-making processes: Evidence from rural Thailand

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2025-02-01

2025-10-01

Children's decision in Stage 2.
For half of the children we will study: i) whether to prefer a competitive or non-competitive payment scheme and ii) decisions over social preferences.
For half of the children we will study: i) risk preferences, ii) time preferences

We will compare children's decision in Stage 2 across different treatments.

Parent's delegation decision and Children's task preference.

We will compare the share of children and parents that make each choice.

The experiment will consist of three treatments. In the first stage, children will face two different options for completing a real effort task where the payment scheme will be a piece rate.

Before the children begin the task, parents will be asked to choose their child's task under different treatment conditions:
• Baseline: Parents have no decision-making authority. Children select their preferred task and complete it accordingly.
• Parents’ Choice Treatment: Before starting, parents decide the task their child will perform. Children are informed that their parents made this decision at the request of the experimenters.
• Delegation Treatment: Before the task, parents choose either to select the task themselves or to allow their child to choose. Children are informed of their parents' decision-making process and choices.

Before making their decision, all participants will complete a trial round for each activity, with each trial lasting one minute and being paid on a piece rate basis. During this phase, children will not receive any feedback about their performance, and parents will not receive any information regarding the trial rounds. This allows us to classify children according to their skills to perform the tasks and to identify whether the delegation decision depends on these skills.

In the second stage, we aim to measure posterior effects on children decision-making processes. Parents are asked to provide beliefs regarding what their children would choose and what they would prefer their kid to choose. Afterwards, we will collect children's social preferences and they will be asked to participate in a real-effort task and choose the payment scheme they prefer between a non-competitive and a competitive scheme.

**Stage 1 of the Experiment: Decision Making process in Pair 1.

The decision making process will depend on the treatment that people play. The treatment will be decided when parents roll the dice in Stage 1.1. Until parents roll the dice, the experiment is exactly the same for everybody. The treatments will be allocated depending on the number displayed in the dice:
i) Baseline, when the dice display 1 or 2;
ii) Delegation, when the dice displays 3 or 4, and
iii) Parents choice, when the dice displays 5 or 6.

*Baseline Treatment: In this treatment, children will make all decisions, and parents do not have any decision power. The experiment would be run in two stages.
Stage 1.1. Parents:
a. Explain the games in Pair 1 (Risk and Time Preferences) to parents and elicit their preferences for their child’s choices: "What would you like to child to choose in each game?"
b. Parents are informed that their involvement in decision-making will depend on the dice roll results.
c. They roll the dice (and the number from the dice is either 1 or 2).

Stage 1.2. Children:
a. Explain the games in Pair 1 (Risk and Time Preferences) to children.
b. Ask children what they would like to do in each game, if they had the chance to choose.
c. Tell children that, given the rules of the game, now they have the chance to choose whatever they want. They can choose the same as in their previous decision or they can choose something different.

*Delegation Treatment: In this treatment, we have two scenarios: Children make decisions if parents delegate. Otherwise, parents’ decisions apply.
Stage 1.1 Parents:
a. Explain the tasks to parents and elicit their preferences for their child’s choices. "What would you like to child to choose in each game?"
b. Parents are informed that their involvement in decision-making will depend on the dice roll results.
c. They roll the dice (and the number from the dice is either 3 or 4).
d. Parents are given two possibilities: i) they let their kids to choose whatever they prefer in the games (delegation), and ii) they make their decision for their kids (no delegation).
1. If parents delegate, parents’ decision is over and the game continues to stage 1.2.
2. If they don’t delegate, then parents are asked what is the decision they want to make for each game. This decision will be given to the kids. Parents will be informed about the decision they made before.

Stage 1.2. Children Choices:
a. Explain the games in Pair 1 (Risk and Time Preferences) to children.
b. Ask children what they would like to do in each game, if they had the chance.
c. In the Delegation case: Children are told that their parents, when given the opportunity to delegate or make the decision themselves, decided to delegate the decision to the children. Children are told that they can choose the same as they did before or they can choose something different. Children are not informed about their parents choices
d. In the no delegation case: Children are told that their parents, when given the opportunity to delegate or make the decision themselves, decided that parents themselves choose the strategy that the kids will play in the two games. Children are informed about the strategy chosen my the parents. Hence, children are not choosing here but they observe their parents choices.

*Parents’ Choice: In this treatment, parents make all decisions, and children are informed accordingly.
Stage 1.1. Parent Instructions:
a. Explain the tasks to parents and elicit their preferences for their child’s choices. "What would you like to child to choose in each game?"
b. Parents are informed that their involvement in decision-making will depend on the dice roll results.
c. They roll the dice (and the number from the dice is either 5 or 6).
d. Parents are asked what is the decision they want to make for each game. This is the decision that will be given to the kids

Stage 1.2. Children Choices:
a. Explain the games in Pair 1 (Risk and Time Preferences) to children.
b. Ask children what they would like to do in each game, if they had the chance.
c. Tell children that, given the rules of the game, their parents were requested to choose themselves the strategy that the kids will play in the two games. Children are informed about the strategy chosen my the parents.

**Stage 2 of the Experiment: Decision making process for Pair 2

Stage 2.1 Parents:
a. Explain the Social Preferences and Competitiveness tasks to parents.
b. Parents are asked to provide: i) incentivized beliefs regarding what their children would choose in each game in Pair 2, and ii) provide what they would prefer their kid to choose in Pair 2.
We play the incentivized task first.
c. Emphasize that children will make decisions themselves in Stage 2, regardless of treatment.

Stage 2.2 Children:
a. Explain the Social Preferences and Competitiveness tasks to children.
b. Children make binding decisions for both tasks in Pair 2. This is for all treatments.

**Games
*Pair 1: Risk preferences game and time preferences game
-Risk Preferences Game: preferences over lotteries.
-Time preference game: 10 units sure today vs. between 10 and 15 units in the future (say in 1 week), where future units increase in 0.50 units.
*Pair 2: Social preferences and competitive preferences
-Social preferences: decide on distribution of units between the subject and another person.
-Competitive task: adding up 2-digit numbers within 3 minutes. The payment can be either piece rate (1 unit per answer) or tournament (2 units if another subject is outperformed). People have to choose the payment system they prefer.
*Incentivized beliefs for parents in Stage 2: Parents are asked to provide the prediction of what their children will choose in the games in Stage 2. Parents will have to submit their expectations for each decision in each game.

Dice roll.

Individual.

No

The RIECE Panel Data (RPD) where this experiment will be conducted covers 3 subdistricts or Tambons -i.e., the smallest official local governmental organization in Thailand, consisting of 8 to 24 villages- of the Mahasarakham and Kalasin provinces.

One small, two medium, and one large village were randomly chosen from each Tambon, for a total of 92 villages. Two more small villages were selected from two Tambons, for a total of 94 villages, because the original small villages from these two Tambons had less than three eligible children. Additionally, the sample includes 299 children from the 2015 survey of the RIECE Thailand project who lived in two or three of the largest villages that were not selected among the 94 villages in each of the 23 Tambons in the sample.

We are counting on having 1,000 children/parents participating in the experiment.

We would have 500 children/parents playing the Delegation treatment. Out of these 500 children/parents, 250 would play risk-time first and then social-competitiveness, and 250 would play social-competitiveness first and then risk-time. Here we have 500 people because they will be divided into two groups: i) parent/children in which parents delegate and ii) those groups in which parents did not.

For Parent’s choice Treatment and Baseline: 250 children/parents playing each treatment. Out of these 250 children/parents, 125 would play the risk-time tasks first and then social-competitiveness, and 125 would play social-competitiveness tasks first and then risk-time.