AEA RCT Registry

Field	Before	After
Trial Status	in_development	completed
Trial End Date	April 24, 2020	May 24, 2020
Last Published	April 21, 2020 11:32 AM	June 05, 2020 09:26 AM
Study Withdrawn		No
Intervention Completion Date		April 24, 2020
Data Collection Complete		Yes
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?		No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations		300 observations (i.e. subjects waiting in line after the experimenter)
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms		150 observations (i.e. subjects waiting in line after the experimenter) in the treatment with mask and 150 observations in the treatment without mask
Is there a restricted access data set available on request?		No
Program Files		No
Data Collection Completion Date		April 24, 2020
Is data available for public use?		No

Field	Before	After
Preliminary Report Completion Date		May 23, 2020
Preliminary Report Abstract		Governments across the world have implemented restrictive policies to slow the spread of COVID-19. Mandatory face mask use has been a controversially discussed policy, among others, due to potential adverse effects on physical distancing. Using a randomized field experiment (N=300), we show that individuals keep a significantly larger distance from someone wearing a face mask than from an unmasked person. According to an additional survey experiment (N=456), masked individuals are not perceived as being more infectious than unmasked ones, but they are believed to prefer more distancing. This result suggests that, in times where mask use is voluntary, wearing a mask serves as a social signal for a preferred greater distance that is respected by others. Our findings provide strong evidence against a potential negative effect of masking on physical distancing, suggesting that mandatory masking would indeed be effective. However, as the social signal from masks may become diluted under a universal masking policy, the observed positive effect of masks on distancing may weaken under mandatory masking.
Paper URL		https://osf.io/es7kt/

Fields Changed