Experimental Design Details
For each tournament, eligible men can sign up as players, umpires (referees), or both. Umpires will be paid Rs. 40 for each match they adjudicate.
After a 5-day sign-up period, we return to administer ability testing (of bowling, batting and fielding ability) for all those that signed up. These ability measures permit testing of whether contact effects depend on the ability of those a person is exposed to.
INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL RANDOMISATION
Individual-level randomisation is carried out after ability testing is complete.
Those in the Control group are split caste-wise (General, OBC and SC/ST), and then each group is randomly split into two (Individual vs. Team Pay). These six groups are then randomly ordered. Each list then serves as a priority ordered set of "backups" for any cases in which those in the Treatment group cannot attend matches they have been scheduled to play in. (For example, if an OBC player with Team Pay cannot play in his match, we attempt to replace him with the Control group member who is atop of the OBC-Team Pay backup list.) This protocol serves as a means of preserving the contact and incentive treatments as far as possible, even in the case of imperfect attendance of matches. Provided backups are not used too frequently (and provided we do not go too far down the list), a large enough Control group is also preserved in order to test the effect of program participation.
After each match, there is also an "income lottery": 1 person will randomly win Rs. 100, and 1 person will randomly win Rs. 50. This enables me to isolate income effects.
MATCH-LEVEL RANDOMISATION:
There is also randomisation at the match-level:
- I first create a random fixture schedule subject to the constraint that each team plays 8 matches, never playing the same team twice.
This gives randomness in the quality of opponents. The pre-determined quality of a given opponent can then be used as an IV for whether a team wins a given match (permitting a test of whether "winning", or achieving a common goal, increases team cohesion and reduces caste prejudice).
- Each match is randomised to have either a General or OBC or SC/ST umpire.
This randomisation is not of primary interest, but given that some allocation of umpires to matches is needed, random allocation comes at no extra cost.
RULES AND REWARDS:
The matches played are limited overs cricket – with 7 overs (1 over = 6 balls) batting, 7 overs bowling (meaning that matches cannot go on indefinitely. In practice, each match lasts roughly 1 hour).
- Individual Pay: when teams are in this treatment group, each player gets Rs. 2.5 per run scored when batting, Rs. 35 per out when bowling. Put another way, each player’s pay depends only on his own performance.
- Team Pay: each player gets Rs. 1/2 per run scored by any team player, and Rs. 7 per out by any team player. Unlike in Individual Pay all players now get the same pay regardless of the match’s outcome.
Payouts are made immediately after each match finishes. After the tournament is over, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd best teams and 1st, 2nd and 3rd best players get additional trophies and monetary prizes.
In the hope of encouraging attendance, players will also each receive a Rs. 10 attendance bonus per match, and all players that attend at least 6 matches are entered into a lottery to win a cricket bat.