The Buy-In Effect: When Increasing Initial Effort Motivates Behavioral Follow-Through - Willingness to Pay - Online Study

In Part 1, study participants will complete three digitization tasks. At the end of the digitization tasks, they are informed that they can sign up for the opportunity to return tomorrow to complete the same tasks (Part 2). Participants are randomized into two main treatments:

1. Less effort - these participants simply indicate yes or no whether they want to sign up for tomorrow.
2. More effort - these participants must fill out a 15-question survey if they want to sign up for tomorrow.

For participants who decide to sign up, after they complete their sign-up, they are asked how much of a bonus (up to $3.50, the maximum they could earn in the return opportunity) they would be willing to accept (WTA) now in order to forego the following day's return opportunity. This is based on the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) method (Becker, DeGroot, & Marschak, 1964). Participants are informed that if the bonus amount they enter is lower than the computer-generated random amount, they will receive the bonus; if the amount they enter is higher than the random amount, they will receive the return opportunity. Incorporating this measure allows us to determine the WTA of participants, i.e., the value they place on the return opportunity, and whether or not the value differs depending on their assignment to the Less Effort vs. More Effort group. On the page after the BDM elicitation, participants are informed of the computer-generated random amount, whether their entered WTA was lower or higher than this, and therefore, whether they will receive the return opportunity. Participants who receive the return opportunity are then invited back to complete Part 2 the next day.

2025-04-15

2025-04-18

Willingness-to-accept price

We will compare the average WTA price between the More Effort treatment group and Less Effort treatment group.

We will remove people who take the study more than once and people who fail the attention check in our study, which involves correctly answering the following question (which randomly presents one of the three number options) :

"This question is presented randomly to determine if you are paying attention while completing the survey. Please select “[$10,000/$50,000/$90,000]” from the responses below to pass the attention check.

What is [10%/50%/90%] of $100,000?

$10,000
$25,000
$32,000
$44,000
$50,000
$90,000
$100,0000"

We will also control for participants who report a WTA of $0 and for the degree of effort in the main task (number of letters entered and percent correct).

We will invite study participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk.

PART 1:
Part 1 of the study consists of 4 parts, described below.

(1) Task instructions and understanding questions:
Participants will be presented with the task instructions. The task asks participants to digitize sets of 35 “fuzzy greek letters" (as used in Augenblick, Niederle, & Sprenger, 2015; Augenblick & Rabin, 2019). Three out of a total of fifty sets of fuzzy greek letters will be randomly presented to each participant. of In order to correctly digitize a fuzzy greek letter, participants must click on the correct corresponding greek letter in the survey. Participants are told that they do not need to complete each set, but that in order to get a bonus payment, they must get 80%, or at least 28 of the 35 letters, correct. After instructions, participants are required to complete three understanding questions before they proceed to the main task. They can repeat these until they get them right.

(2) Main task:
Participants are then presented with three digitization task (where they must click next after completing task 1 to be presented with task 2, then task 3).

(3) Sign-up for return opportunity:
Participants are asked if they would like to sign up for a return opportunity tomorrow, which they are told will involve the same digitization tasks and will be available from 9am-5pm Eastern Time tomorrow. They are also told that regardless of their choice, they have already earned their guaranteed payment and bonus payment for today. The rest of the instructions differ slightly depending on which treatment groups they are in:

MAIN TREATMENTS:
- Less Effort: "If you would like to receive access to tomorrow's return opportunity, please click yes. Otherwise, click no."
- More Effort: "If you would like to receive access to tomorrow's return opportunity, please click yes. This will take you to an additional 15-question survey on the next page. Otherwise, click no." The survey consists of 15 questions. On the survey page, participants can review the questions and change their mind (i.e., decide not to complete the questions, and not sign up for the return opportunity).

(4) Willingness-to-accept: After completing sign-up, participants are asked how much of a bonus payment they are willing to accept in order to forego the following day's return opportunity. They will be asked to enter a payment amount up to $3.50, and are informed that if the amount they enter is lower than the computer-generated random amount on the following page, they will receive the payment amount they entered, and if it is higher than the computer-generated random amount, they will receive the return opportunity instead. On the following page, they are informed of the computer-generated random amount, whether their number is higher lower, and therefore whether they will receive the additional bonus or the return opportunity.

They are then brought to the end of the survey.

PART 2:
As explained to study participants, Part 2 is available on the Amazon Mechanical Turk Platform from 9am to 5pm Eastern Time. It consists of two sections:

1. Instructions: Participants will be presented with the task instructions. The task instructions are the same as in Part 1.
2. Main task: Participants will then be presented with the digitization tasks. The tasks are the same as in Part 1.

Exclusions:
- We will exclude any duplicate responses (i.e., participants who take Part 1 more than once)
- We will exclude anyone who does not pass the attention check

Randomization conducted automatically in Qualtrics, with equal amounts of participants assigned to each group

Individual

No

0

325 participants to Part 1 or until one week has passed. The study will only be active on weekdays, so that Part 1 will only be conducted Monday-Thursday, and Part 2 will only be conducted Tuesday-Friday.

Less effort - 162
More effort - 163

We require a sample size of 260 to be sufficiently powered for a MDE of 26 cents at a 5% significance level, based on a baseline mean of $1.50 and a SD of 1.4.