Inter-regional trust and expectations: An large online experiment in Russia

Last registered on June 23, 2020

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Inter-regional trust and expectations: An large online experiment in Russia

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0006029

Initial registration date

June 23, 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

June 23, 2020, 11:09 AM EDT

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

Locations

Country

Russian Federation

Region

Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Kazan, Perm, Khabarovsk, Makhachkala, Novosibirsk, Voronezh, Arkhangelsk, Ekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don

Primary Investigator

Name

Gari Walkowitz

Affiliation

Technical University of Munich

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Heike Hennig-Schmidt

PI Affiliation

Bonn University; HSE, Higher School of Economics Moskow

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Alexis Belianin

PI Affiliation

HSE, Higher School of Economics Moskow

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Philipp Chapkovski

PI Affiliation

HSE, Higher School of Economics Moskow

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2020-07-01

End date

2020-12-31

Keywords

Health

Additional Keywords

Trust, Trustworthiness, Beliefs, Regional Differences, Inter-regional Exchange

JEL code(s)

C71, C91, D91, P25, P48

Secondary IDs

Abstract

The aim of the project is to measure interregional trust, its determinants and associated
expectations in Russia for the first time. We will apply an incentivized online experiment
where the participants from the different regions interact. They will make decisions
in the trust game (Berg et al., 1995). In this game, participants are paired.
The first member of the pair (the trustor) decides whether or not to transfer a certain
amount of money to the second member of the pair (the trustee). Before handed over to the trustee,
the transferred amount is tripled. The matched trustee has then the opportunity to return
any of the received amount to the trustor. Trust by the trustor and trustworthiness of the
trustee allow both members of a pair to get higher earnings (cooperation), while the lack of trust and
trustworthiness (equilibrium behavior) deprives them of such an opportunity. The study
will involve participants from twelve distinct Russian regions. These participants will be recruited
via the online platform "Toloka" (https://toloka.yandex.com/; a provider comparable to MTurk).
The participants will be matched randomly either with participants from their own city/region or with
participants from one of the other eleven cities/regions. Immediately after the main
experiment, all participants will be asked to state their expectations regarding the
matched trustor’s or trustee’s behavior. Finally, survey questions will be asked related to
participants’ socio-demographic characteristics, trust attitudes, knowledge about the other
cities/regions involved in the study, personality, and economic preferences.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Belianin, Alexis et al. 2020. "Inter-regional trust and expectations: An large online experiment in Russia." AEA RCT Registry. June 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.6029-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The participants (trustors and trustees) will interact either with participants from their own
city/region or with participants from one of the other eleven cities/regions. They take
twelve trust or trustworthiness decisions (depending on their role). One decision will
be chosen randomly for payoff determination. We will include participants from the following cities/regions: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Kazan, Perm, Khabarovsk, Makhachkala, Novosibirsk, Voronezh, Arkhangelsk, Ekaterinburg, Rostovon-Don.

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2020-07-01

Intervention End Date

2020-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

1. Trustors' trust and associated beliefs: represented by the decision "to trust" or "not to
trust" a participant (trustee) from another distinct city/region; represented by the expected degree
of positive "returns". 2. Trustees' Trustworthiness and associated beliefs: represented by
the degree of positive "returns" to another participant (trustor) from a distinct city/region;
represented by the expected decision "to trust" or "not to trust".

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

We will also obtain an interregional overview on participants’ socio-demographic
characteristics, trust attitudes, knowledge about the other cities/regions involved in the
study, perceived income disparity between regions, personality, and economic
preferences.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Participants will make simultaneous (within one day) decisions, using the strategy method (Selten, 1967),
in the trust game. In the game, participants are paired. The first member of a pair (the
trustor) decides whether or not to transfer 10 Tokens to the second member (the trustee).
Before handed over to the trustee, the transferred amount is tripled. The matched trustee
has then the opportunity to return any of the received amount (0 - 30; in steps of three
Tokens) to the trustor. The study will involve participants from twelve distinct Russian cities/regions. These participants will be recruited via the online platform "Toloka" (https://toloka.yandex.com/; a provider comparable to MTurk). For payoff determination, the participants will be matched randomly either
with another participant from their own city/region or with a participant from one of the
other eleven cities/regions. Because we will apply the strategy method, each participant
(trustor or trustee) takes a decision for a participant in the opposite role from each of the
involved twelve cities/regions (i.e., twelve decisions). After the main experimental task,
we will ask the trustors about their expectations regarding the return behavior of trustees
in all twelve cities/regions. Similarly, we will ask the trustees about their expectations
regarding the transfer behavior of trusters in all twelve cities/regions. The elicitation of
expectations is incentivized.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

1) Player roles are randomly assigned by the experimental software when participants start with the online experiment (software which conducts the random assignment of roles: oTree).

2) Random matching of participants (creating pairs of trustors and trustees) across cities/regions for payoff determination will be excecuted after all participants from all cities/regions have taken their decisions (software which conducts the random matching: oTree).

Randomization Unit

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

We will include participants from twelve different cities/regions in Russia. We will include participants from the following cities/regions: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Kazan, Perm, Khabarovsk, Makhachkala, Novosibirsk, Voronezh, Arkhangelsk, Ekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don. Each participant (trustor and trustee) takes a decision for a counterpart from each of the twelve cities/regions involved.

Sample size: planned number of observations

We will collect about 200 observations - from 100 trustors and 100 trustees - per city/region. The total number of observations will be about 2.400 (1.200 trustor decisions, 1.200 trustee decisions).

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

A "treatment" is the interaction of a city/region x all twelve cities/regions involved in the
study. This makes 12 x 12 decision constellations = 144 "treatments" for each player role.
We will collect about 200 observations - 100 trustors, 100 trustees - per "treatment".

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

It seems very difficult to derive the detectable effect size, because our design includes 144 decision constellations, applied in a country were previous experimental results are very rare and non-existant for an experiment comparable to ours. When we determined the sample size per city/region and role (100 observations per role, 200 observations per city/region), we followed the conventions of comparable studies (see for example Herrmann, B., Thöni, C., & Gächter, S. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319(5868), 1362-1367). Moreover, in a comparable interregional study in China, Chmura at al. (2016), e.g., had only less than half of the observations (956 in total) we will have (Chmura, T., Goerg, S. J., & Weiss, P. (2016). Natural groups and economic characteristics as driving forces of wage discrimination. European Economic Review, 90, 178-200). The aspired number of observations also exceeds the typical convention of observations per treatment in the experimental economics society.

Supporting Documents and Materials

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

Request Information

IRB