Resilience and solidarity in agebased vs kinbased societies

Last registered on October 27, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Resilience and solidarity in agebased vs kinbased societies
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0017093
Initial registration date
October 23, 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
October 27, 2025, 9:26 AM EDT

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

Locations

Country
Netherlands
Region
Sidebank of the Dawa Wenz - Borana Zone and Dawa Zone

Primary Investigator

Name
Emma Elisabeth Rikken
Affiliation
Wageningen University and Research (Netherlands)
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Erwin Bulte
PI Affiliation
Wageningen University & Research
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PI Name
Daan van Soest
PI Affiliation
Tilburg University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-10-23
End date
2026-01-15
Keywords
Behavior
Additional Keywords
Sharing, informal safety nets
JEL code(s)
A14, C91, C93, D30, D91, E24, Z13
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This research uses a lab-in-the-field experiment to examine how male adults from Somali and Borana pastoralist communities—whose social safety nets are based on kinship and age sets, respectively—make sharing decisions. These communities, located on opposite sides of the River Dawa, are highly comparable except for their mode of social organization. This project aims to better understand how different communities structure their internal systems of sharing, and what this means for the distribution of support during times of scarcity or crisis as well as over-all distribution of wealth. These variations in sharing practices are rarely taken into account in policy design, but may significantly affect how external support is received, redistributed, or reinforced within communities, as well as internal resilience to both idiosyncratic and covarying shocks.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Bulte, Erwin, Emma Elisabeth Rikken and Daan van Soest. 2025. "Resilience and solidarity in agebased vs kinbased societies." AEA RCT Registry. October 27. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.17093-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention (Hidden)
We elicit, for each participant and in 12 decision situations, how much money he allocates to himself, to one of his kin, and also to one of his peers (an individual in the same ageset). The decision situations are framed neutrally (asking the participant to reallocate money given an initial distribution) and also in changes (mimicking positive and negative shocks). The data will be used to assess whether the final allocations differ between Somali and Borana participants, reflecting the sharing norms in their respective societies.
Intervention Start Date
2025-10-23
Intervention End Date
2025-11-07

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Willingness to share with kin versus with peers
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Amount of money kept by each participant, as well as the amount of money the participant allocates to his kin and his peer he is matched with.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Selfishness
Reference dependence
Allocations in loss game versus win game
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Selfishness: the average amount allocated to the participant themselves

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We elicit, for each participant and in 12 decision situations, how much money he allocates to himself, to one of his kin, and also to one of his peers (an individual in the same ageset). The decision situations are framed neutrally (asking the participant to reallocate money given an initial distribution) and also in changes (mimicking positive and negative shocks). The data will be used to assess whether the final allocations differ between Somali and Borana participants, reflecting the sharing norms in their respective societies.
Experimental Design Details
A lab in the field experiment.

The choice experiment is designed as follows:

The experiment is designed as follows.
The initial allocations are the following (in Birr):
A1: (me, peer, kin) = (0, 700, 300)
A2: (me, peer, kin) = (0, 300, 700)
A3: (me, peer, kin) = (300, 700, 0)
A4: (me, peer, kin) = (300, 0, 700)
A5: (me, peer, kin) = (700, 0, 300)
A6: (me, peer, kin) = (700, 300, 0)
Respondents are asked to re-allocate as desired across the three piles.
The order is randomized. For the second and third choice experiment, the allocations are de facto the same, but only three (A1 or A2, A3 or A4, and A5 or A6) will be presented in each to better represent shocks.
For the choice experiment, we will store each choice separately. Subsequently, we can analyze several outcomes:
- The amount received by kin
- The amount received by peers
- The amount the respondent allocated to themselves.

Two additional rounds will be played in a fourth experiment, in which participants are forced to choose between sharing with their kin or their peer. These are, in random order, (i) both the peer and the kin losing their entire allowance and the participant can choose who to help if any and (ii) the participant losing their entire allowance and choosing whether to receive a transfer from their kin or peer, if any.

Summed payouts are consistent across rounds.
Randomization Method
No randomization method is used. Rather, we exploit the natural variation in societal structures in otherwise comparable communities.
The order of the presented allocations, the gains and loss frame, choice sets and the two additional questions are randomized.
Randomization Unit
N.a.
The differentiation in societal structures varies naturally at societal level (ethnic background, language etc.)
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
400 participants
Sample size: planned number of observations
4800 individual choices
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
200 Borana participants, 200 Somali participants
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
7.6% minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes, in ratios, with a 0.3 standard deviation, a 0.8 ICC (within-participant across choices), 80% power and 95% significance level.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
WUR Research Ethics Committee for review of non-medical studies with human subjects (WUR-REC)
IRB Approval Date
2025-10-14
IRB Approval Number
2025-190
IRB Name
The WUR Research Ethics Committee for review of non-medical studies with human subjects (WUR-REC)
IRB Approval Date
2025-10-14
IRB Approval Number
2025-190
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials