An Experiment on Property and Morality

Last registered on November 17, 2020

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
An Experiment on Property and Morality
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0005325
Initial registration date
January 19, 2020

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 21, 2020, 1:57 PM EST

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

Last updated
November 17, 2020, 6:30 AM EST

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University Pompeu Fabra Barcelona

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Columbia University

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2020-01-21
End date
2020-03-15
Secondary IDs
Abstract
The relationship between law and culture has long been the focus of scholarly attention by academic lawyers, economists and political scientists (see e Dari-Mattiacci and Guerriero, 2015, for a review and recent reassessment). Among prevalent cultural values, moral commitments take center stage and have been recently shown to vary greatly across regions (Awad et al.,2018). An emerging literature is starting to analyze the empirical foundations and implications of moral concerns (Sommers, 2020). While it is intuitive that there must be a connection between a society's prevalent set of moral norms and its laws, most previous studies only address part of the problem and, namely, how culture and morality affect the law. So far there is no rigorous empirical study as to how the law affects a society's moral attitudes. We aim at making a first step towards understanding how property rights---a crucially important set of legal rules---affect morality. We study how changing property rights affects individuals' survey responses to traditional moral dilemmas---such as killing more or fewer people, killing a man or a woman, killing the young or the old, and the like---which is turn can be matched to broader moral stands, such us the attitude towards gender, age, wealth, and social status.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Dari-Mattiacci, Giuseppe and Marco Fabbri. 2020. "An Experiment on Property and Morality." AEA RCT Registry. November 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5325-1.3
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
See attached pre-analysis plan.
Intervention Start Date
2020-01-21
Intervention End Date
2020-03-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Nine binary moral choices made by participants.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
See attached pre-analysis plan.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We implement nine choices of the classical trolley dilemma as specified in the Moral Machine Experiment (Awad et al., 2018). We combine this design with the process of implementation of a reform of property rights over land in order to have treatment and control groups.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
In office by computer.
Randomization Unit
Village
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
32
Sample size: planned number of observations
576
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
288
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Commitee - Parc de Salut MAR
IRB Approval Date
2018-04-11
IRB Approval Number
2018/8015/I
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

An Experiment on Property and Morality

MD5: e6923f178f726057b9f25ccf0b2cc5c5

SHA1: d36f46543aca9c78598823a7fabfe7562e7f97fd

Uploaded At: January 19, 2020

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
March 15, 2020, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
March 15, 2020, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
32
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
576
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
288
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials