Sharing losses across time and money

Last registered on August 18, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Sharing losses across time and money
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0016472
Initial registration date
August 18, 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
August 18, 2025, 7:04 AM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Serena Huang
Affiliation
The University of Queensland
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Vera te Velde
PI Affiliation
The University of Queensland
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PI Name
Marco Faravelli
PI Affiliation
The University of Queensland
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-08-20
End date
2026-12-31
Keywords
Behavior, Lab
Additional Keywords
Sharing losses, Social norms, Time domain
JEL code(s)
D03, D64, C91
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The project seeks to answer the question: What explains the time and money asymmetry when sharing losses? We use an experimental framework involving three parts to rigorously test hypotheses derived from existing literature and general observations. We hypothesise that differences in time valuations for self and others as well as social norms are a predictor of this asymmetry. We will investigate this through a laboratory experiment with a 2x2 design: participants will play a monetary dictator game and non-monetary game in either order, and the non-monetary domain will be either waiting time or time spent listening to an aversive tone.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Faravelli, Marco, Serena Huang and Vera te Velde. 2025. "Sharing losses across time and money." AEA RCT Registry. August 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16472-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The study includes one key experimental intervention: Participants play a monetary dictator game in addition to a dictator game allocating time spent either listening to an aversive tone or waiting passively. Additionally, as a second intervention, the order of these two games will be varied.
Intervention Start Date
2025-08-20
Intervention End Date
2025-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Key outcome variables in this experiment include the allocation decisions of individuals in the dictator game for money and for time (waiting time or time listening to an aversive tone). We are also interested in willingness-to-accept valuations for four possible durations of additional waiting time, and what participants believe is the distribution of willingness-to-accept valuations for others (specifically the 10th, 50th and 90th percentiles of the distribution of WTA values). We also measure social norms ratings of several possible allocation choices in the dictator game variants and incentivized guesses of the percentage of participants that selected each rating for each action.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
We additionally collect qualitative survey responses about the importance of several factors to their dictator game allocation decisions.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Participants are randomly assigned to one of two time treatments (allocated time in the non-monetary dictator game is spent either passively waiting or listening to an aversive tone) and one of two order treatments (the monetary dictator game is played before or after the non-monetary game).

In Part 1, we measure the preference for sharing losses using two dictator games. Each participant is matched to another, and both choose how to split a monetary loss, and then participants are rematched and both similarly choose how to split a time loss. One of the decisions in each pair will be implemented at the end of the experiment to determine the monetary and nonmonetary payoffs.

In Part 2, participants are first required to make a valuation of their minimum willingness to accept a specific duration of the nonmonetary treatment (waiting time or listening to an aversive tone). We elicit WTA for four possible durations - 2, 4, 6, and 8 minutes for the tone treatment, and 6, 12, 18, and 24 minutes for the waiting treatment. The Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism is used to elicit the true willingness to accept that participants have in relation to the time treatment. Participants are then asked to guess the low, middle and high values of others' valuations, representing the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles of the distribution of WTA values. One of these guesses across one of the four durations are randomly selected to determine the participant's bonus payment using a binarized scoring rule.

In Part 3, participants first rate the social appropriateness of five potential choices from each of the two dictator games that they played in Part 1. This is followed by participants making an incentivised guess of the percentage of participants that selected a specific rating for a specific action. The aim is to elicit beliefs of social norms, which may play a role in determining the preference for loss sharing across domains. One of these guesses are randomly selected to determine the participant's bonus payment using a binarized scoring rule.

After completing all three parts of the decision-making experiment, participants complete a survey and their payoffs are implemented.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomisation is done in the computer lab by the code algorithm. Assignment to treatments happens on a session-by-session basis.
Randomization Unit
Different experimental sessions will be randomly assigned to different treatments, as needed based on enrolment numbers to balance the sample across treatments.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
8 sessions. More or fewer sessions may be needed to obtain the desired sample size.
Sample size: planned number of observations
Approximately 160 participants, targetting at least 40 per treatment
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
4 sessions (80 participants) in the money and time listening to an aversive tone treatment; 4 sessions (80 students) in the money and waiting time treatment
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Accounting for the within-subject design and assumed correlation (= 0.5) in repeated measures, the minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes is approximately 0.44 when the analysis is powered at 80% (alpha = 0.05). This is based on a 10,000 iteration simulation and 80 participants per group. This corresponds to a mean difference of 4.5 units and assuming a standard deviation of 10 units on the outcome measures.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
The University of Queensland Business, Economics and Law Faculty Low and Negligible Risk Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2025-07-31
IRB Approval Number
2025/HE001229
Analysis Plan