Repression and Cooptation in Authoritarian Judiciary: Field Experiment with Chinese Lawyers

Last registered on June 16, 2025

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Repression and Cooptation in Authoritarian Judiciary: Field Experiment with Chinese Lawyers

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0016205

Initial registration date

June 11, 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 16, 2025, 7:19 AM EDT

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

Locations

Country

China

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Ziwen Zu

Affiliation

University of California, San Diego

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-06-23

End date

2026-01-01

Keywords

Governance

Additional Keywords

lawyer, rule of law, repression, cooptation, information provision

JEL code(s)

C93 ; D72 ; D73 ; K42 ; P26

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

This study tests how different kinds of official-looking messages influence the day-to-day choices of lawyers in China. Around 20000 licensed lawyers who use a large legal-services app will receive a short weekly newsletter for ten weeks. Each newsletter is identical except for one short headline that is randomly varied:
• A Risk headline warns that certain public-interest cases are under state scrutiny.
• An Honor headline praises lawyers who take those cases for their professional reputation.
• A Peer headline says many colleagues are already involved.
• A State-Broker headline invites lawyers to work alongside government legal-aid offices.
• A Neutral headline simply lists new case opportunities.
Because the headline is assigned by chance, any systematic difference in what lawyers do next can be traced back to the message they saw. The app automatically records whether a lawyer opens the newsletter, clicks to view case details, agrees to represent a public-interest client, or joins a relevant discussion group. Before the first newsletter and again after ten weeks, participants also fill out a brief survey about their work, views on the legal system and willingness to do public-interest cases.
The main goal is to learn whether warnings of repression deter civic-minded lawyering and whether appeals to prestige, peer norms or state partnership encourage it. All data are stored in de-identified form on secure servers, and the study has Institutional Review Board approval. Findings will shed light on how carrots (honor, collaboration) and sticks (risk warnings) deployed by an authoritarian state can steer the behavior of professionals who play a key role in upholding—or challenging—the rule of law.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Zu, Ziwen. 2025. "Repression and Cooptation in Authoritarian Judiciary: Field Experiment with Chinese Lawyers." AEA RCT Registry. June 16. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16205-1.0

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention (public description)
Each participant receives one short legal-industry newsletter every Monday for ten consecutive weeks, delivered simultaneously by in-app notification and back-up SMS. The newsletter always contains four standard items (new regulations, typical cases, compliance tips, and sector news). Only the fifth item—labelled 本期专题 (“focus of the week”)—differs across experimental arms:
1. Risk frame – warns that certain public-interest or rights-defense cases are under heightened state scrutiny and may carry professional danger.
2. Honor frame – highlights the prestige and professional recognition lawyers can earn by handling public-interest cases.
3. Peer-norm frame – reports that many colleagues in the same region have recently taken similar cases and invites the reader to join them.
4. State-broker frame – presents public-interest work as an opportunity to collaborate with official legal-aid channels and strengthen ties with government partners.
5. Neutral frame – simply lists new consultation opportunities without persuasive language (serves as the comparison condition).
The frame assigned to a lawyer is determined by computerized randomization before the first newsletter and remains the same for all ten weeks. Embedded tracking links record whether the lawyer opens the newsletter, clicks to view a case invitation, or joins a themed WeChat group. No other aspect of the platform or messaging changes.

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-07-01

Intervention End Date

2025-09-20

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

1. Newsletter engagement (click-through).
For each lawyer we record whether they open any of the ten newsletters. If the tracking link embedded in at least one issue is clicked, the outcome is coded 1; otherwise 0. Data come directly from the platform’s server logs.

2. Sensitive-case uptake.
We track whether a lawyer accepts at least one consultation invitation classified as politically sensitive (for example, rights-defense or anti-corruption cases) during the ten-week window. Clicking “take case” or scheduling a consultation registers the event. The outcome is coded 1 if such an acceptance occurs, 0 if not.

3. Public-interest network participation.
Each newsletter contains a link to join a dedicated “Public-Interest Law” WeChat group. The outcome is coded 1 if the lawyer joins this group at any time during the study period, 0 otherwise. Join events are captured automatically through the platform’s API.

All three measures are binary, rely on unobtrusive digital traces, and are linked to participants only through anonymized IDs.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

This study is a randomized field experiment designed to test how different types of official-style messaging influence the behavior of licensed lawyers in China. The intervention is embedded in a legal-services platform that provides professional tools and marketing resources to tens of thousands of lawyers nationwide.

Participants are invited to subscribe to a new weekly legal newsletter. After consenting and completing a short baseline survey, each lawyer is randomly assigned to receive one of five versions of the newsletter for ten consecutive weeks. All newsletters are identical in structure and timing, but vary in one short framing message embedded in a section called “This Week’s Focus” (本期专题). This message is designed to simulate a subtle signal of either risk (e.g., warning about case sensitivity), professional recognition (e.g., honor framing), peer norms, state collaboration, or a neutral message with no persuasive content.

Randomization is conducted at the individual level and stratified on region, gender, seniority, and legal specialization. Participants remain in the same frame for the entire 10-week period. Outcomes are passively recorded through platform logs and include whether the lawyer opens the newsletter, clicks on case invitations, accepts a case, or joins legal discussion groups. A follow-up survey is conducted at the end of the study to measure attitudinal changes and confirm behavioral self-reports.

The trial is fully anonymized, approved by an Institutional Review Board, and designed to assess how state-style messaging can influence civic and professional decision-making under authoritarian conditions.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization is conducted by computer using a reproducible algorithm. Specifically, lawyers are individually assigned to one of five treatment arms using computer-generated random numbers, implemented through the `blockTools` package in R. The randomization is stratified by four pre-specified variables: region, gender, professional seniority, and legal specialization. The process ensures balanced representation across arms and is executed prior to the start of the intervention. Treatment assignment is linked to each lawyer’s anonymized ID and uploaded to the platform backend to control message delivery.

Randomization Unit

The unit of randomization is the individual lawyer. Each participating lawyer is independently and randomly assigned to one of five treatment arms. There is no group- or cluster-level randomization. All randomization occurs at the individual level, stratified by region, gender, seniority, and legal specialization to ensure balance across treatment conditions.

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

Each lawyer constitutes a single randomization unit; there are no higher-level clusters such as firms or regions.

Sample size: planned number of observations

20,000 individual lawyers.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Risk frame: approximately 4,000 lawyers
Honor frame: approximately 4,000 lawyers
Peer Norm frame: approximately 4,000 lawyers
State Broker frame: approximately 4,000 lawyers
Neutral (baseline) frame: approximately 4,000 lawyers

Total planned sample size: 20,000 individual lawyers
Final counts may vary slightly due to stratified randomization and any post-consent exclusions.

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

Power Calculation: Minimum Detectable Effect Size (MDE) Main outcome: Sensitive-case uptake, a binary variable with an expected baseline rate of 5% under the Neutral condition. Assumptions: • Total sample size: 20,000 individual lawyers • Randomization: individual-level, no inter-cluster correlation • 5 treatment arms (approximately 4,000 lawyers per arm) • Two-sided test, α = 0.05 • 80% power • Standard deviation for a binary outcome at p = 0.05: √[0.05 × 0.95] ≈ 0.218 Minimum Detectable Effect Size (MDE): • For a two-arm comparison (e.g., Risk vs Neutral, n ≈ 4,000 per group), the MDE is approximately ±1.9 percentage points (detecting a change from 5% to 3.1% or 6.9%). • This corresponds to a standardized effect size (Cohen’s h) of approximately 0.14, which is considered small but policy-relevant. With repeated measures (weekly tracking), the effective power is even higher, especially if panel methods are used. However, all MDEs above are computed conservatively using a single endline measure per lawyer.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB