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

Last registered on January 22, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The effect of paternalistic decisions on children’s self-esteem and long-term decision-making processes: Evidence from rural Thailand
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015122
Initial registration date
January 20, 2025

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
January 22, 2025, 8:24 AM EST

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

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Primary Investigator

Name
Santiago Garcia-Couto
Affiliation
Georgetown University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Matthias Sutter
PI Affiliation
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
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PI Name
Ramon Cobo-Reyes
PI Affiliation
Georgetown University
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PI Name
Weerachart Kilenthong
PI Affiliation
University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-02-01
End date
2025-10-01
Keywords
Behavior, Education
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
I25, J24, C93
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Extensive evidence demonstrates that individuals often deviate from rational decision-making due to cognitive biases, framing effects, and limited self-control. These systematic deviations can lead individuals to make choices that are not in their best long-term interests. To address these challenges, paternalistic interventions, such as automatic enrollment in pension plans, taxes on unhealthy foods, and default options, have been widely adopted by both governments and corporations (Mulligan and Philipson, 2000; Mott, 2003; Currie and Gahvari, 2008).
Paternalistic interventions are often found also in the context of families. Having children’s best interest in mind, parents frequently make decisions for their children. These decisions can range from choosing the neighborhood where children grow up, the school they attend, what extracurricular activities they do, or when their children do their homework. All these decisions will affect children in the future since attending schools of higher quality, or having contact with high-performing peers improves children’s chances for better school performance, higher educational attainment, and higher earnings (e.g., Card and Krueger, 1992; Dobbie and Fryer, 2011; Chetty and Hendren, 2018).
Paternalism, by definition, involves interventions that limit or influence individual choices. This restriction of autonomy can have several negative consequences, since autonomy is deeply connected to essential aspects of cognitive and emotional development, such as critical thinking, risk assessment, and self-regulation. By limiting autonomy, paternalistic policies may impair subjects’ development and learning processes, making individuals more susceptible to decision-making errors in situations where external controls are absent (citation). Second, paternalistic interventions may foster a culture of dependency, where individuals become overly reliant on external structures to guide their choices. This can undermine personal responsibility and diminish self-confidence (citation).
Despite the consequences that paternalistic policies might have on subjecs’ future development and decision making, empirical evidence is still scarce. This paper aims to fill that void by studying the effect of paternalistic decisions on children’s long-term decision making process.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Cobo-Reyes, Ramon et al. 2025. "The effect of paternalistic decisions on children’s self-esteem and long-term decision-making processes: Evidence from rural Thailand." AEA RCT Registry. January 22. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15122-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
-
Intervention Start Date
2025-02-01
Intervention End Date
2025-10-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
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

Primary Outcomes (explanation)
We will compare children's decision in Stage 2 across different treatments.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Parent's delegation decision and Children's task preference.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
We will compare the share of children and parents that make each choice.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
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.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Dice roll.
Randomization Unit
Individual.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
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.
Sample size: planned number of observations
We are counting on having 1,000 children/parents participating in the experiment.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan