Information about Peer Altruism and Preferences for Prosocial Jobs: Evidence from Medical Students in China

Last registered on June 18, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Information about Peer Altruism and Preferences for Prosocial Jobs: Evidence from Medical Students in China
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018881
Initial registration date
June 13, 2026

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
June 18, 2026, 9:27 AM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Jianan Yang
Affiliation
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2026-05-01
End date
2026-12-31
Keywords
Behavior, Crime, Violence, & Conflict, Education, Health, Labor
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study estimates medical students’ preferences for job attributes and their willingness to pay (WTP) for different job characteristics as they approach the labor market. We further examine whether and how peer-comparison information about altruism causally shifts these preferences. We measure social preferences with an incentivized task and elicit job-attribute preferences through a hypothetical discrete choice experiment. We first document how beliefs about one's own social preferences relate to job preferences. We then randomly provide peer-comparison feedback to test how updating beliefs—about both the population distribution of altruism and one's own rank within it—affects WTP.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Yang, Jianan . 2026. "Information about Peer Altruism and Preferences for Prosocial Jobs: Evidence from Medical Students in China." AEA RCT Registry. June 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18881-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2026-06-13
Intervention End Date
2026-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1) Altruism weight;
2) Equality-efficiency tradeoff;
3) Preferences for job attributes;
4) Willingness to pay (WTP) for job attributes.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
1) Altruism weight is defined as the relative weight placed on the payoff of the other recipient in a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) utility function.
2) The equality-efficiency tradeoff is captured by the curvature of the indifference curves implied by the CES utility function.
3) Preferences for job attributes are measured by estimated coefficients on annual income at age 30, promotion probability, working hours, and workplace.
4) Willingness to pay (WTP) for job attributes is defined as the wage compensation required to accept a one-unit increase in a non-wage job attribute.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
1) Prior beliefs about peer average altruism and own relative ranking.
2) Heterogeneous responses to peer-comparison information, including by prior beliefs.
3) Heterogeneity by gender, baseline altruism, socioeconomic background, rural/urban origin, and exposure to the medical profession.
4) Attitudes toward and experience with medical AI tools.
5) Actual job choices and perceived job attributes.
6) Final employment outcomes, conditional on successful follow-up.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Our study sample consists of medical students in their graduating year who are approaching the labor market. The experiment uses a between-subjects information treatment design. When participants log in to the experiment website, they are randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control group (T1 = 0, T2 = 0; N = 400), treatment group 1 (T1 = 1, T2 = 0; N = 400), or treatment group 2 (T1 = 0, T2 = 1; N = 400). The information intervention is placed after the dictator game and prior-belief elicitation, and before the job choice experiment.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization was conducted before the start of the experiment. We implemented blocked randomization by gender and school, and the resulting treatment assignment was preloaded into the experiment website.
We assessed balance across treatment groups by regressing baseline individual characteristics on the two treatment indicators, T1 and T2. These characteristics include gender, ethnicity, parental education, parental occupation, whether any family member works in the healthcare industry, place of residence, family income, and national college entrance exam score.
Randomization Unit
individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
No cluster design
Sample size: planned number of observations
Around 1,200 medical students
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Around 400 individuals in control and each of the two treatment groups
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Peking University Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2026-05-27
IRB Approval Number
IRB00001052-26070
Analysis Plan