Prosociality and discrimination between gender and cultures: an experimental study in Egypt and Germany

The aim of the study is to gain insights into prosocial preference and chances for coordination within an intercultural context. For this, German and Egyptian participants are put into different decision context.

We investigate how the behavior is affected by the identity of the interacting partner. We vary this information by country background (Egypt/Germany) as well as gender (male/female). With this, our study contributes to the literature on gender discrimination in a unique cross-cultural context. Gender-based discrimination within one culture may or may not carry over when interacting with individuals from a different culture or ethnicity. As a novel feature, our experiment allows to also investigate the degree to which discrimination is accepted by the individuals subject to this discrimination. While the treatments vary the identity of the partner of the decision maker, we also investigate how behavior and treatment effects depend on the identity of the decision maker itself.

The experiment combines in a within design several pro-sociality games (dictator, ultimatum game) with a coordination game (battle of sexes) which allows for an ex post punishment conditional on the choice of the partner. We expect that discrimination as identified in the pro-sociality games and its acceptance can facilitate coordination.

Each participant will play the following order of games:
1. Standard dictator Games, varying the costs of transfers
2. Standard Ultimatum Game
3. The coordination game with asymmetric punishment option

Depending on the treatment, for each of the games, the participant will be matched with:
EM: Matched with Egyptian male
EF: Matched with Egyptian female
GM: Matched with German male
GF: Matched with German female

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Bock, Olaf et al. 2019. "Prosociality and discrimination between gender and cultures: an experimental study in Egypt and Germany." AEA RCT Registry. December 16. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5178-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2019-12-13

Intervention End Date

2019-12-20

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

- Individual choice in each game
- Managing to coordinate in the coordination game

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

-First and second order beliefs for all games
- Correlation of behavior across games

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We investigate how the behavior is affected by the identity of the interacting partner. We vary this information by country background (Egypt/Germany) as well as gender (male/female).

Experimental Design Details

The experiment is set up as follows:
Participants are recruited for an online experiment both at the BUE (Egypt) as well as at University of Hamburg (Germany). The experiment is programmed in Limesurvey.

Each participant will then play the following games, all in the same order:
1. Standard Dictator Game
2. Dictator Game with a multiplication factor of 2 between the dictator and the receiver (for each point transferred by the dictator, the receiver gets double the amount)
3. Dictator Game with a multiplication factor of 0.5 between the dictator and the receiver (for each point transferred by the dictator, the receiver gets half the amount)
4. Standard Ultimatum Game
5. Coordination Game with a punishment option after the game

As the subject pools in Egypt and Germany participate at potentially different times, each participant makes choices for all possible roles in games 1-4 via the strategy methods. Participants are then matched accordingly after all data has been collected.

The matching depends on the treatment. There are four treatments in total. Treatments vary in the group a participant is matched with.

The treatments are:
EM: Matched with Egyptian male
EF: Matched with Egyptian female
GM: Matched with German male
GF: Matched with German female

The treatments are randomized to keep the number of participants per treatment equal within gender and ethnicity (block randomization).
After the games, participants fill out a demographic survey. In addition, we elicit both the first and second order beliefs for all games. The belief questions are incentivized.

Randomization Method

Computerized block randomization

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

No clusters.

Sample size: planned number of observations

We sample 592 participants. Half will be participants in Egypt, the other half in Germany. Out of the 296 participants per country, half will be male, the other half will be female. While there will be a total of 148 participants per treatment, we can also observe heterogeneities in treatment effects depending on the own identity. There will be 37 observations per combination of own identity and the paired partner’s identity.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

The sample is equally allocated.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB