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Needs and empathy when deciding for others

Last registered on June 29, 2019
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Needs and empathy when deciding for others
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0003773
Initial registration date
January 04, 2019

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
January 04, 2019, 10:50 PM EST

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

Last updated
June 29, 2019, 12:22 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Region
Country
Gambia
Region
Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Gökhan Buturak
Affiliation
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Emre Yildiz
PI Affiliation
Mälardalen University
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2019-01-06
End date
2019-09-30
Keywords
Other
Additional Keywords
decision making, risk taking, loss aversion, needs, empathy, experiment
JEL code(s)
C91, D03, D81, G02
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Risk taking on behalf of others is common in many decisions and has been the focus of recent research in economics, finance and psychology. Majority of the previous research involving experiments did not provide any information to the decision makers about those on whose behalf they make decisions. More recent studies focused on the effect of social distance (i.e., making decisions for oneself, a friend, or a stranger) on risk preferences (see, e.g., Montinari and Rancan, 2018; Batteux, Ferguson and Tunney, 2017; Zhang et al., 2017). Different from these, the current study aims to test the effect of needs of other people on risk attitudes and their degree of loss aversion when making risky decisions on behalf of others. For that purpose, we will randomly assign clients to decision makers either from an African country that is characterized by poverty or from a Western country that is characterized by prosperity. More precisely, in our study, participants from the US, who are going to be recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk, will make risky decisions for either themselves (control group), a person from England (treatment 1), or a person from the Gambia (treatment 2). Participants in the role of decision makers will be informed about the nationality of their clients.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Buturak, Gökhan and Emre Yildiz. 2019. "Needs and empathy when deciding for others." AEA RCT Registry. June 29. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3773-3.0
Former Citation
Buturak, Gökhan and Emre Yildiz. 2019. "Needs and empathy when deciding for others." AEA RCT Registry. June 29. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3773/history/48902
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2019-01-07
Intervention End Date
2019-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Differences in the degree of risk aversion and loss aversion between decisions made for self, for another person from England and for another from the Gambia.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experiment is based on a between-subject design and consists of the elicitation of risk preferences using choice lists.
Experimental Design Details
The experiment is based on a between-subject design and consists of the elicitation of risk preferences using choice lists.

The experiment will consist of a control group in which the participants make decisions for themselves, and two treatment groups in which the participants make decisions for another person either from England or from the Gambia.

The choice lists in our experiment aim to elicit certainty equivalents for 8 different binary lotteries involving either only gains, only losses, or both gain and loss.

The experiment is coded using oTree, a Python-based platform developed by Chen, Schonger, Wickens (2016).

To maintain consistency in decisions, reduce the time required to complete each choice list and decrease noise in the data, we employ the Javascript code provided by Holzmeister (2017), which auto-completes choices along the list in a consistent manner.

At the end of the experiment, we ask participants a set of questions that intend to elicit their other-regarding behavior, risk attitudes and degree of loss aversion. For loss aversion, we use two questions adapted from McGraw, Larsen, Kahneman,
and Schkade (2010) and another from Engle-Warnick, Pulido and de Montaignac (2017)
Randomization Method
Randomization is done by computer.
Randomization Unit
Randomization was done at the individual level.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
300 pairs of participants = 600 participants (300 of which will be in the role of decision maker).
Sample size: planned number of observations
300.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
About 100 pairs for each of the control and 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
Manchester Metropolitan University, Business School Ethics Committee.
IRB Approval Date
2018-07-23
IRB Approval Number
2018-0676-504
Analysis Plan

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