Intervention (Hidden)
This lab experiment is a follow-up to a previous field experiment Social Media, Body Image, and Economic Decisions (AEARCTR-0014958). In the field experiment, we find that social media algorithms suggest more weight-loss content to users who demonstrate an interest in body positivity. In this lab experiment, we will quantify the welfare effects of this policy. To do so, we will elicit stated preferences for types of social media content, after which we will randomize participants into different short simulated social media feeds that show different types of content. We will observe their watch behavior in this simulated social media feed and compare it to their stated preferences. Finally, we will assess how exposure to different social media feeds affects well-being.
First, we will survey participants about their social media use and preferences. After several screening questions, we will elicit willingness to pay to exclude certain types of content (e.g., weight loss, body positive, cryptocurrency/video games, advertisements). We will incentivize by implementing a small fraction of people’s choices in the next section (below), in which participants are asked to watch a stream of social media videos (skipping or replaying content as they like). We are most interested in their preferences for weight loss content and body positive content. The other genres may serve as placebos.
After, we will randomize participants into the following treatment arms:
(1) Mixed videos – a video stream including several genres (neutral, body positive, weight-loss, and other) (other could for example be video games, cryptocurrency)
(2) Body positive videos – a video stream including neutral and body positive videos (neutral + body positive)
(3) Weight-loss videos – a video stream including neutral and weight-loss videos (neutral + weight-loss)
(4) Control – a video stream made of all neutral videos
Videos are all taken from pools of TikTok videos of each genre. Videos are randomly drawn from the pool of videos in each genre. For example, if someone is assigned to treatment 2, they would be provided a video stream of 40 videos, some of which are randomly drawn from a pool of neutral videos (taken from the general TikTok For You Page) and some of which are randomly drawn from a pool body positive videos shown in the field experiment. The order of the videos is randomized. Once assigned to a treatment arm, the participant is asked to watch (skipping, replaying as they please) for 10 minutes. If they complete the stream of 40 videos early, they will continue to the next part of the survey early. During this section, we are interested in whether participants are able to avoid content they said they would prefer to exclude. For example, can people who want to avoid body positive content skip past it? Weight-loss content? We will use watch time for each video to estimate this.
Afterwards, we will ask several open-ended questions to understand effects on well-being. We will also use measures of body image and mood from the psychology literature. We will also ask several questions to understand how participants interpreted the content given to them. These questions are meant to understand how different genres of video content affect well-being.
Finally, we will offer participants an opportunity to debrief after the study. They can choose a category of videos (and with certainty, they will receive a short stream of videos from that category) to improve their mood.