Increasing workplace giving (third study)

Last registered on October 26, 2020

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Increasing workplace giving (third study)
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0006662
Initial registration date
October 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
October 26, 2020, 2:15 PM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2020-10-26
End date
2020-11-10
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This study will examine the effectiveness of various behaviourally informed approaches in increasing workplace giving.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Team Registration, BETA. 2020. "Increasing workplace giving (third study)." AEA RCT Registry. October 26. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.6662-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Two different behaviourally informed interventions will be distributed to participants.
Intervention Start Date
2020-10-26
Intervention End Date
2020-11-10

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Primary outcomes: workplace giving sign-up. We will also seek to collect data on whether people followed through and actually became a regular workplace giver.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary outcomes: average amount (in dollars) given by staff who donate through workplace giving
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
A two-arm trial, randomised at the individual level. With 2 key data collection points.
Experimental Design Details
The trial will be a two-arm design, with two treatment groups (but no control). There will be 2 key data collection points. All participants in this trial will receive an email encouraging them to sign up to WPG, plus a second email 11 days later.

Treatment 1 – Group A – sequenced give later
1st email - Give now: Staff will receive an email that encourages them to sign up to start donating through WPG now.
2nd email - Give later: Staff (who are yet to sign-up) will receive an email that acknowledges that now may not be a good time for them to start giving, but maybe they would like to register now to start giving in the New Year?

Treatment 2 – Group B – Up front give later
1st email - Give later: Staff will receive an email that encourages them to sign up now, but with donations not starting until the New Year (ie 2-3 months in the future).
2nd email – simple reminder: Staff (who are yet to sign-up) will receive a simple reminder email about registering now to start WPG in the New Year.

Data collection points
The first data collection point will occur immediately before the second emails are sent on day 11. (That is, everyone who signs up between the first email being sent and the second email being sent will be seen as attributable to the first emails.) The second data collection point will be on day 16. This will mark the end of the end of the trial period.

All staff working at our corporate partner in the week of 12 October 2020 are eligible for inclusion, besides current workplace givers and staff involved in the design and implementation of the trial.

We have four hypotheses
H1. Give Later sign-up > Give Now sign-up (up to first data collection point)
H2. Give Later actually started giving > Give Now actually started giving (using follow-up data from New Year, but only those that sign-up before the first data collection point)
H3. Sequenced Give Later (ie Group A) ≠ Up front Give Later (ie Group B) (second data collection point)
H4. (secondary outcome) give later mean amount given > give now mean amount given (up to first data collection point)

Note that we do not propose to adjust for multiple hypothesis testing. We expect that the outcomes for H1 and H2 will be highly correlated.

Post-trial survey: We may perform a survey on individuals enrolled in the trial after data collection ends. We will treat this survey as exploratory.
Randomization Method
Randomisation will be at the level of individual staff members. Individuals will be randomly assigned to the two treatment groups using complete random assignment. Assignment will be balanced (that is, an equal number in each treatment group) to the extent that the sample size allows.
Randomisation will be implemented via an R script using the ‘complete_ra’ command from the ‘randomizr’ package .
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
981 individuals
Sample size: planned number of observations
981 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
490 in treatment 1, 491 in treatment 2
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
We performed power calculations using simulation for our main hypothesis (H1). This indicated that at an alpha of 5%, we will have 80% power to detect a standardised effect of 0.159. If we assume that post-intervention group A has a giving rate of 1% after the intervention, this would be equivalent to a 3.2% or a 3.2pp increase for group B.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
BETA Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2020-10-19
IRB Approval Number
BETA ETH 2020 – 069
Analysis Plan

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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