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Preferences for Religious Giving

Last registered on June 17, 2015

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Preferences for Religious Giving
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000558
Initial registration date
February 11, 2015

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
February 11, 2015, 1:55 AM EST

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

Last updated
June 17, 2015, 8:07 AM EDT

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

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Toulouse School of Economics(IAST)

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
TSE
PI Affiliation
TSE
PI Affiliation
TSE
PI Affiliation
WZB

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2015-02-11
End date
2015-12-31
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This study investigates why people give money to religious organizations, using a laboratory experiment in Accra, Ghana. In particular, we seek to understand to what extent religious organizations such as churches and mosques provide informal insurance to households. Although contracts exist with quite low premiums, less than 1% of Ghanaian households are insured. With 96% of inhabitants reporting themselves to be religious, beliefs in a God play a major role in the daily lives of many Ghanaians. Much of this religious activity is backed by regular and significant contributions to the church through tithes, regular offering, and other forms of giving. We offer households a range of incentivized choices between donations to religious organizations and other financial options. We implement treatments including increasing the perceived risk of life accidents and the provision of free insurance to observe the effect on the demand for religious giving. We compare populations of church members and a control group drawn from the general population.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Auriol, Emmanuelle et al. 2015. "Preferences for Religious Giving." AEA RCT Registry. June 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.558-2.0
Former Citation
Auriol, Emmanuelle et al. 2015. "Preferences for Religious Giving." AEA RCT Registry. June 17. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/558/history/4508
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The study will be conducted in two parts: first, a survey covering demographic
questions and religious beliefs and behaviour and second, a decision task
presenting participants with binary choices on ways to spend 11GHS.
Our interest is to investigate the effect of increasing the salience of life accidents risk and the effect of providing individuals an insurance policy on their preferences for making donations to different causes.


Intervention Start Date
2015-02-11
Intervention End Date
2015-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The key outcome variable is the potential difference in donations between individuals endowed with treatments and individuals without, and difference between active church members of a specific denomination and a control group.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design

We divide the subjects into three groups; 1/3 of the subjects will be allocated with a life insurance policy, 1/3 of the
participants will be told about, but not endowed with, this insurance policy, and 1/3 of the participants will form the control group.
The study will be carried out in two populations. The church group will consist of people recruited from the Assemblies of God church and the general group will be recruited from the Kaneshie market in Accra.
Experimental Design Details
Church participants will be recruited from the church population. General participants will be recruited
from the Kaneshie market in Accra. They will be approached in advance and invited to show up to a specific session. All
participants will receive text message reminders about the experiment session
and location. The show-up fee will be calibrated to ensure that it covers basic
public transport to the experiment location. Anyone above the age of 18, and the mental and
physical capacity to answer questions for 1.5 hours will be eligible to participate
in the experiment.
The
experiment classroom will be equipped with 10 computers separated by some
sort of physical divider. All locations will also have a black/whiteboard. The
choices to be played and their associated tags (A, B , C,…J) will be prominently
displayed for the duration of the experiment. Participants have to choose how to allocate 11GHS between 2 options. The alternatives are: keeping the money, donating to the thanksgiving offering of the National Prayer
Week, donating to the Street Children Empowerment Fund, making a private donation directly to the Assemblies of God and making a non-anonymous donation directly to the Assemblies of God for the church or making a private and a non-anonymous donation to the market's association for market's members.
church, anonymously and publicly. All these choices are kept anonymous, except for the public choice to give to the church, for which the name of the participant and the amount he chose to give is communicated to the Pastor
Randomization Method
Draw a sealed enveloppe by a participant
Randomization Unit
Randomization at the session level
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
at least 36 sessions
Sample size: planned number of observations
at least 360 participants
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
at least 12 sessions with insurance, 12 sessions with increased perceived risk, 12 control sessions; half of them with church members, half of them with market members
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number

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