The role of a motivational account and specificity of referent characteristics in overplacement about personal saving behavior

We will conduct an online experiment where participants are randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a condition where the characteristics of the referent are kept relatively vague, and a condition where the characteristics of the referent are made more specific.

2025-09-16

2025-10-21

Overplacement about personal saving behavior
Respondents' beliefs about personal saving behavior of the respondent themselves (self-beliefs)
Respondents' beliefs about saving behavior of peers (other-beliefs)

Overplacement will be defined as the difference between beliefs about self and beliefs about others. For both the referent-vague and referent-specific condition, respondents will answer 3 items about their own saving behavior and 3 items about others’ saving behavior. We will calculate one overplacement measure for the referent-vague condition and one for the referent-specific condition if Cronbach's alpha for the self-beliefs and for the other-beliefs is larger than 0.61.

The overplacement variable will be constructed such that a value larger than zero indicates overplacement, and a value smaller than zero indicates overplacement. A value of zero indicates no bias.


Self-beliefs measure:
1. How good are you at saving?
On an 11-point scale ranging from ‘0, not good at all’ to ‘10, very good’

2. How often do you have money left at the end of the month and therefore save?
On an 11-point scale ranging from, '0, almost never' to '10, almost always'

3. How much of your income do you save?
On an 11-point scale ranging from '0, very small part' to '10, very large part'


Other-beliefs measure (referent-vague condition):
1. How good are they at saving?
On an 11-point scale ranging from ‘0, not good at all’ to ‘10, very good’

2. How often do they have money left at the end of the month and therefore save?
On an 11-point scale ranging from, '0, almost never' to '10, almost always'

3. How much of their income do they save?
On an 11-point scale ranging from '0, very small part' to '10, very large part'

Perceived importance of saving

Control variables, such as socio-economic and demographic variables (such as age, gender, income, level of education, living situation, savings).

Perceived importance of saving will be calculated by averaging the scores on two items to measure the importance of saving.

Items used:

How important do you think it is to save money?
How important do you think it is to have savings?

On an 11-point scale ranging from ‘0, not important at all’ to ‘10, very important’.

We will conduct an online experiment where participants are randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a condition where the characteristics of the referent are kept relatively vague, and a condition where the characteristics of the referent are made more specific.

Our experiment will be part of an online survey held amongst Dutch young adults. The survey is about financial choices when visiting music festivals and about saving behavior. Our experiment will come after a block of questions about financial choices when visiting festivals. Respondents will be recruited via consumer panel Dynata and respondents will receive a small financial compensation for their participation, which is being paid by Dynata. The experiment will be conducted once.

Not available

We randomize at the individual level (respondent), randomization is done by the survey software.

We randomize at the individual level (respondent)

No

No clusters.

We aim to recruit around 1500 Dutch adults aged of 18 up to and including 30 years.

Our aim is that respondents are evenly distributed among the two experimental conditions. That would mean around 750 respondents in the referent-vague condition and around 750 in the referent-specific condition.