Preference Transparency and Statistical Discrimination in Employees’ Relocation Decisions

Last registered on June 13, 2025

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Preference Transparency and Statistical Discrimination in Employees’ Relocation Decisions

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0016186

Initial registration date

June 06, 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

June 13, 2025, 6:51 AM EDT

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

Locations

Country

Indonesia

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Lolita Moorena

Affiliation

The Australian National University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-06-30

End date

2025-12-31

Keywords

Gender, Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

Despite making up nearly half of the workforce, women are consistently underrepresented in leadership positions. Gender gap in leadership is largely attributed to systemic discrimination influencing promotion decisions. Discrimination can take into a form of employers’ preference, their prejudice, and statistical discrimination or perception about a group’s characteristics, which can be accurate or inaccurate. These different forms of discrimination pose significant barriers for women in attaining leadership roles, perpetuating the cycle of gender inequality in the workplace. In jobs where higher-level position is limited, a relocation due to promotion is often a key factor for employees to advance in their career, such that perceived inflexibility can limit opportunities in particular for women to higher-level positions. This study investigates how can policy be designed to reduce discrimination for women to be promoted to leadership position.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Moorena, Lolita. 2025. "Preference Transparency and Statistical Discrimination in Employees’ Relocation Decisions." AEA RCT Registry. June 13. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16186-1.0

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

I conduct a field experiment with sales officers from a large Indonesian bank to study how perceptions and information influence promotion decisions involving relocation. Participants are asked to evaluate hypothetical candidates with varied characteristics such as gender, marital status, and performance. The experiment consists of two stages: first, eliciting perceptions and preferences regarding willingness to relocate; and second, presenting randomized candidate choices under different information treatments related to mobility preferences and post-promotion performance.

Intervention (Hidden)

I will ask sales officers from a large bank with nationwide branch offices in Indonesia to choose between two hypothetical candidates which have random attributes of gender, marital status, and performance to promote with relocation. In the first stage I will ask their perception of employees willingness to move then elicit their actual preference. Afterwards, participants will be asked to choose 5 sets of hypothetical candidate pairs with random attributes.
In the second stage, participants are divided into 3 treatment arms to receive 5 sets of candidates pair. In treatment arm 1 (T1), all participants in the 250 branch offices will receive information about the hypothetical candidate’s willingness to move. In T2, all participants in the 250 branch offices will receive information about the average preference for relocation of single women, married women, single men, and married women. In T3, all participants in the 250 branch offices will receive information stating that women and men have similar performance after being promoted despite being relocated.

Intervention Start Date

2025-07-01

Intervention End Date

2025-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Misperception about women employee’s preference for relocation, Choice of candidate to be relocated

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The pilot study will be conducted in 750 randomly selected branch offices of one of the largest bank in Indonesia.

Experimental Design Details

The pilot study will be conducted in 750 randomly selected branch offices of one of the largest bank in Indonesia. Participants of the survey are all sales officers from the selected branch offices. The survey will be conducted online through Qualtrics platform. I will compare the promotion decisions of the employees in the first stage, with the senior managers’ to examine the accuracy of their choice. I will also compare the results with the actual promotion decisions before and after the experiment.

Randomization Method

Computer random number generator

Randomization Unit

Branch office

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

750

Sample size: planned number of observations

The number of sales officers in the branch offices varied between 2 and 64 people. The total sales officers participate in the survey is 3,000 people.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

250 offices will get individual preference information, 250 offices will get group’s average preference, and 250 offices will get future performance information

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Assuming 80 percent power, 5 percent size, and an intra-village correlation in outcomes of 0.1 or less, our design permits a 0.018 or better minimum detectable eﬀect size for outcomes measured at the individual level.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB