Group Identity, Professional Impartiality, and Food Standards Monitoring

Last registered on October 07, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Group Identity, Professional Impartiality, and Food Standards Monitoring
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0019843
Initial registration date
September 30, 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
October 07, 2026, 10:22 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
Anisah Anwari
Affiliation
Newcastle University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2026-10-01
End date
2027-03-31
Keywords
Behavior
Additional Keywords
Ingroup bias; Food standards monitoring; Minimal group paradigm; Group identity; Professional Impartiality; Online experiment
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study will investigate whether food standards inspectors exhibit differences in monitoring decisions between ingroup (shared group identity) and outgroup producers, and whether a professional impartiality reminder reduces the ingroup-outgroup monitoring gap. While inspectors are expected to be impartial, Social Identity Theory suggests that shared group identity may unconsciously influence monitoring decisions. In a monitoring context, this may result in inspectors allocating fewer monitoring units to ingroup firms than to outgroup firms, potentially increasing the likelihood that non-compliance remains undetected within the ingroup and thereby creating risks to the integrity of food standards systems.
This study will use an oTree-programmed online experiment conducted on Prolific Academic. Participants will be matched into experimental cluster of 5 comprising of 1 food inspector and 4 food producers, two from same colour group as the food inspector (ingroup) and two from the other colour group (outgroup). Arbitrary colour groups, i.e. blue and green, will be randomly assigned following the Minimal Group Paradigm. Across eight repeated rounds, inspectors will allocate five monitoring units across two ingroup and two outgroup producers, while producers will generate and report food quality grades and may choose to misreport. Treatments will be randomly assigned to each food inspector to either a control condition or a professional impartiality reminder condition.
The primary objective will be to test whether inspectors allocate fewer monitoring units to ingroup than to outgroup producers and whether the professional impartiality reminder reduces the ingroup-outgroup monitoring gap. Some exploratory analysis will also be conducted to explore how inspectors update their monitoring decisions following the detection of ingroup and outgroup non-compliance and whether differential monitoring is associated with higher rates of undetected non-compliance.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Anwari, Anisah. 2026. "Group Identity, Professional Impartiality, and Food Standards Monitoring." AEA RCT Registry. October 07. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19843-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention 1: Control
In the control condition, participants assigned to the food standards inspector role will complete the monitoring experiment without receiving a professional impartiality reminder. They will receive the standard experimental instructions describing their assigned colour group, role and tasks.
Intervention 2: Professional impartiality reminder
In the professional impartiality reminder condition, participants assigned to the food standards inspector role will complete the same monitoring allocation task as the control group. In addition to the standard instructions, inspectors will receive a professional impartiality reminder based on the principle of impartiality in ISO/IEC 17020. The reminder will be presented before the first monitoring allocation decision and participants must acknowledge reminder before proceeding with the monitoring allocation decision.
Intervention Start Date
2026-10-01
Intervention End Date
2027-03-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Number of monitoring units allocated to each food producer in each round.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The primary outcome will be the number of monitoring units allocated by a food standards inspector to each food producer in each round. The primary analysis will compare monitoring units allocated to ingroup and outgroup producers and assess whether the professional impartiality reminder reduces any difference in monitoring allocation between the two groups. We hypothesise that inspectors allocate fewer monitoring units to ingroup producers than to outgroup producers. We also hypothesise that the ingroup–outgroup difference in monitoring allocation will be smaller in the professional impartiality reminder condition than in the control condition.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
1. Undetected non-compliance (binary)
2. Monitoring allocation updating following non-compliance detection
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
1.Undetected non-compliance will be measured as a binary outcome equal to 1 when a food producer misreports a food quality grade and not detected due to no monitoring allocated, and 0 otherwise. Exploratory analyses will examine whether the likelihood of undetected non-compliance differs between ingroup and outgroup producers.
2. Monitoring allocation updating will be measured as changes in the number of monitoring units allocated in subsequent rounds following the detection of non-compliance. Exploratory analyses will examine whether inspectors update their monitoring allocations differently after detecting ingroup versus outgroup non-compliance.
In addition, the demographic information and post-experiment survey measures will also be collected, including risk attitudes, role engagement, and group identity measures. For food standards Inspectors, this includes beliefs about ingroup and outgroup compliance rates, trust in ingroup producers, suspicion towards outgroup producers, and perceptions of professional impartiality norms. For food producers, this includes beliefs about honest reporting as a social norm, perceived leniency from ingroup inspectors and scrutiny from outgroup inspectors, guilt associated with misreporting, and compliance pressure. These measures will be used descriptively and in exploratory analyses to examine potential mechanisms and sources of behavioural heterogeneity.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Participants will be recruited through Prolific Academic to take part in a multiplayer online experiment programmed in oTree. Eligible participants must be resident in the United Kingdom, 18 years of age or older, fluent in English and have a Prolific approval rating of at least 95%, All eligibility criteria will be screened using Prolific's prescreening filters before participants can access the study. Participants who meet the eligibility criteria and provide informed consent will complete a brief video-based attention check. Participants will be given a maximum of two attempts to answer the attention check correctly before proceeding to the experiment.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization is programmed and implemented in oTree using its built-in random assignment functions.
Randomization Unit
Individual at inspector-level
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
To be determined following a formal power analysis based on the pilot study. Each cluster will comprise one Food Standards Inspector and four Food Producers.
Sample size: planned number of observations
To be determined based on a formal power calculation following the pilot.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
To be determined based on a formal power calculation following the pilot.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
To be determined
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Newcastle University Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2026-07-22
IRB Approval Number
80896/2026
Analysis Plan

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