Do monetary incentives matter for identifying social preferences? [Registered Report]

Last registered on January 13, 2025

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Do monetary incentives matter for identifying social preferences? [Registered Report]
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015147
Initial registration date
January 10, 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 13, 2025, 1:07 PM EST

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Affiliation
ETH Zurich, KOF Swiss Economic Institute

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
CNRS, IESEG School of Management, University of Lille & iRisk Research Center on Risk and Uncertainty
PI Affiliation
University of Zurich, Department of Economics
PI Affiliation
University of Zurich, Department of Economics

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-01-10
End date
2025-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This is the preregistration for the registered report entitled “Do monetary incentives matter for identifying social preferences.” Social preferences play an important role in a wide variety of domains. It is therefore important to measure them accurately. In this context, a particularly important question is whether monetary incentives matter for their identification. In this proposal, we provide the details of an experiment with a general population sample aimed at answering the following questions: i) Do incentives affect subjects’ willingness to pay to increase, and their willingness to pay to decrease the payoff of others? ii) Do incentives affect the distribution of social preferences? iii) Do incentives affect the precision of estimated parameters of a model of inequality aversion? We attach to this submission the (accepted) proposal of our registered report, which provides details on the proposed research design and outlines our plan for the data analysis.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Epper, Thomas et al. 2025. "Do monetary incentives matter for identifying social preferences? [Registered Report]." AEA RCT Registry. January 13. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15147-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We measure social preferences using a money allocation tasks in which participants have to decide how to allocate experimental currency units (ECUs) between themselves and an anonymous other participant of the study. Our key treatment variation manipulates whether subjects’ decisions in the money allocation task are incentivized or not. In the HYPOTHETICAL treatment, we do not incentivize subjects’ choices, i.e., their decisions are hypothetical and do neither affects their own payoff, nor the payoff of the other participant. In contrast, we incentivize subjects’ decision in two treatments (LOW-INCENTIVES and HIGH-INCENTIVES) by paying them (and the recipients) on the basis of their choice in a randomly drawn choice situation. These treatments allow us to cleanly assess whether and how monetary incentives affect the measurement of social preferences. Moreover, the increase in stakes size between the LOW-INCENTIVES and the HIGH-INCENTIVES treatments, which are scaled by a factor of 5, allows us to assess whether stake size matters. See the attached registered report for details.
Intervention Start Date
2025-01-10
Intervention End Date
2025-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
(1) Descriptive evidence: Subjects’ modal choice across negatively sloped budget lines and across positively sloped budget lines.

(2) Clustering results: Distribution of subjects’ preference types resulting from the Dirichlet Process (DP) means clustering algorithm (Bayesian nonparametric approach).

(3) Structural estimates: Distributions of structurally estimated parameters of aversion towards disadvantageous inequality (behindness aversion) and advantageous inequality (aheadness aversion).

See the attached registered report for details.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
The end of the survey includes a module with additional survey questions that relate to subjects’ general preferences for redistribution, altruism, trust in government, political preferences, beliefs about causes of success in life, career choices, health behaviors with externalities, religiosity, and childhood experiences.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Our design is based on Fehr (r) al. (2022, 2023). We elicit social preferences using a task in which participants have to decide how to allocate experimental currency units (ECUs) between themselves and an anonymous other participant of the study. These choice situations systematically vary the cost and the efficiency consequences of redistribution. In addition to the money allocation task, the study will include questions related to subjects’ socio-demographics as well as a few additional survey items.

See the attached registered report for details.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
The randomization is implemented directly on Qualtrics. Qualtrics randomly assigns subjects into either the HYPOTHETICAL treatment, the LOW-INCENTIVES treatment, or the HIGH-INCENTIVES treatment.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
-
Sample size: planned number of observations
3,000 subjects from a population sample that is broadly representative of the US population with respect to age and gender. Data collection will be completed in collaboration with Prolific. While our main analysis will rely on a general population sample, we will also collect responses from an additional 300 students carefully prescreened from Prolific. The study will include control questions for the money allocation task. Participants who fail to pass the control question will be excluded from the final sample. See the attached registered report for details.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
3,000 general population subjects from Prolific: 1000 per treatment.
300 students from Prolific: 100 per treatment.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
-
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Human Subjects Committee of the Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology at the University of Zurich
IRB Approval Date
2024-04-22
IRB Approval Number
OEC IRB # 2024-043
Analysis Plan

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