Whose (misperceived) norms matter? Shifting norms of paternity leave take-up

2025-10-01

2026-04-03

Our primary outcomes are behavioral indicators of employees' interest in paternity leave and related workplace norms. These include:

1. Information-seeking behavior: whether respondents click on links to the institutional webpage on paternity leave and to a report on leave in Italy.

2. Willingness to pay (WTP) for information:
(i) Incentivized WTP to learn information on peer take-up (T2) or managerial support (T3), elicited using a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism;
(ii) Hypothetical WTP to learn the "maximum acceptable" number of leave days according to different workplace agents (supervisors, managers, executives, colleagues).

3. Participation in information campaign: willingness to (costly) participate in a campaign about paternity leave, with choice of target group (employees/managers/executives, male/female, firm size, sector).

4. Stated take-up intentions: employees' self-reported likelihood of using paternity leave.

We also measure attitudinal outcomes capturing respondents' perceptions and beliefs about the barriers to paternity leave take-up:

1. Information: knowledge of PL entitlements (length, replacement rate, legal entitlement).

2. Career concerns: (i) Employee perceptions of whether leave-taking affects career progression; (ii) Manager agreement (via list experiment and direct questions) with the statement "Employees who take paternity leave have a lower chance of being promoted"; (iii) Second-order beliefs (e.g., managers' beliefs about employees' fears of career costs; employees' beliefs about peers' fears).

3. Social norms and stereotypes: attitudes toward whether paternity leave challenges traditional gender roles.

4. Organizational constraints: perceptions of whether replacing a worker on leave creates difficulties for the company.

5. Perceived peer and managerial support: employees' (incentivized) best guess of (i) paternity leave take-up among peers similar to them and (ii) the share of managers who believe that taking paternity leave does not have negative career consequences.

Data will be collected through an online survey programmed and administered via the Bocconi-hosted Qualtrics platform by the research team. Participant recruitment and survey distribution will be managed by a survey company selected through a public tender process. The selected company has been chosen based on its demonstrated compliance with GDPR and relevant research data protection standards, and on the quality, size, and detailed profiling of its respondent panel. The survey company will not have access to the survey data, which will be stored and managed exclusively by the research team.

Participation is voluntary and anonymous. No identifying information will be collected. Incentives will be offered via lottery to encourage honest participation. The survey company will manage the distribution logistics.

The main sample will consist of male employees aged 20-45 employed in Italian private-sector companies (~2,000), complemented by a smaller sample of female employees (~300). Eligibility is restricted to participants currently in a relationship, thus excluding single, divorced, or widowed individuals. Stratification criteria include age (below/above 34), educational attainment (graduates vs. non-graduates), and geographic location of the workplace (by macro area). If possible, we will oversample participants employed in firms based in Southern Italy, as paternity leave take-up is particularly low among these groups.

Respondents are randomly assigned to one of four groups: an active control group and three treatment groups (T1, T2, T3). Treatments are at the individual level and consist of informational messages embedded within the survey. The active control group is exposed to a baseline informational module unrelated to paternity leave (statistics on part-time employment), designed to control for attention and information exposure. The three randomized treatments receive the following information:
• (T1) information on paternity leave entitlements (length, replacement rate, legal entitlement);
• (T2) the same information as in T1, augmented with information on actual take-up among workers similar to the respondent (same region, firm size category, and contract type);
• (T3) the same information as in T1, augmented with information on average support for PL among ~300 managers, based on responses collected in a separate prior survey (i.e., the share of managers reporting that taking paternity leave does not have negative career consequences).

All groups include a willingness-to-pay (WTP) elicitation module for additional information, to ensure comparable survey length and attention across experimental arms and to expose all respondents to monetary trade-offs prior to outcome measures involving costly choices (e.g., information campaign choices). In the active control group and in T1, the elicited WTP concerns statistics on part-time employment; in T2 it concerns information on peer take-up; and in T3 it concerns information on managers’ beliefs about career consequences.

The smaller complementary sample of female employees will receive no informational treatments and thus also serves as a (passive) control group.

Prior to circulating the employee survey, we will administer a separate survey targeting about 300 managers to collect information on their views of paternity leave. We target male and female managers aged 20-55, stratified by gender and educational attainment (graduates vs. non-graduates). This survey is uniform across manager, with no randomization involved, except for a list experiment that indirectly measures agreement with a statement related to paternity leave and career penalties (“Employees who take paternity leave have a lower chance of being promoted”), along with unrelated workplace items (such as teamwork, punctuality, and communication). Participation is voluntary and anonymous. The survey company will manage the distribution logistics.

At the beginning of the survey, all respondents answer a screening question about their role within the company. Based on their response, they are redirected to the corresponding manager or employee branch of the survey.

Randomization will be performed at the individual level (among survey participants) using the randomizer embedded in Qualtrics flow.

Individual level

No

N/A

The main sample will consist of male employees aged 20-45 employed in Italian private-sector companies (~2,000), and a smaller female employee sample (~300). We will also run a separate prior survey with around 300 managers to collect information on their support for PL.

In the male employee survey, individuals will be randomly assigned to a treatment arm as follows:
- Approximately 350 subjects will be in the active control group and will receive information unrelated to paternity leave (part-time employment statistics);
- Approximately 550 subjects will be in the information treatment group 1 (T1) and shown information on paternity leave entitlements (length, replacement rate, legal entitlement);
- Approximately 550 subjects will be in the information treatment group 2 (T2) and shown the same information as in T1, together with information on the average take-up rate among male employees similar to them (same region, firm size category, and same contract type);
- Approximately 550 subjects will be in the information treatment group 3 (T3) and shown the same information as in T1, together with information about managers’ beliefs about the career costs of paternity leave.

Female employees (~300) will be given no information treatment.

Among managers (~300):
- Half of the subjects will be in the information treatment group of the list experiment (asked about possible career penalties over five different workplace behavior, including the sensitive statement concerning paternity leave);
- Half of the subjects will be in the control group (asked about possible career penalties over only four different workplace behavior, without including the sensitive statement concerning paternity leave).