The Impact of Descriptive Social Norms on Parental Leave Take-up Among Mothers

Last registered on December 01, 2020

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

The Impact of Descriptive Social Norms on Parental Leave Take-up Among Mothers

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0006838

Initial registration date

December 01, 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

December 01, 2020, 1:27 PM EST

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

Locations

Country

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Region

Europe

Primary Investigator

Name

Asuman Erenel

Affiliation

Linnaeus University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Jens Agerström

PI Affiliation

Linnaeus University

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Magnus Carlsson

PI Affiliation

Linnaeus University

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2020-12-03

End date

2021-01-10

Keywords

Gender

Additional Keywords

parental leave, social norms

JEL code(s)

J13, J91

Secondary IDs

Abstract

Across the world mothers take the majority and fathers only a small share of parental leave (PL) after individuals become parents. Especially during the first year of a child, mothers spend more time with the child, while fathers continue to work. It is well-documented that this creates gender inequalities in the labor market and affects children’s outcomes, and these effects tend to persist also in the long-term. Therefore, it is important to understand what factors influence this gender difference in responsibility after childbirth.
Potential important factors that can affect the gender difference in parents’ PL plans include to what extent there exist a system for parental allowance (and how it is constructed), gender inequalities in income from work, gender barriers in the labor market, culture and norms (Duvander 2014; Wall and Arnold 2007; Lappegård et al. 2020; Dahl et al. 2014).The current project investigates the role of norms. Norms can be divided into two types (Cialdini et al. 1991). Injunctive social norms are norms about what an individual ought to do. Hence, it is about moral approval (or disapproval) of others. A descriptive social norm is what other people do. In this project, we will conduct a survey experiment to investigate to what extent descriptive social norms – specifically, the number of days other mothers stay home with their children during the first year after childbirth – influence the number of days a particular mother stays home. The rationale for focusing on mothers is that they have received less attention than fathers in the discussion of how to achieve a more gender balanced parental leave take-up (see, e.g., Farre and Gonzalez 2017 and Dahl et al. 2014) although mothers´ behavior also could be important. Norms could play an essential role for mothers and constitute a barrier that hinders mothers from reducing their take-up (which in turn could constrain the father in a couple from increasing his take-up).

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Agerström, Jens, Magnus Carlsson and Asuman Erenel. 2020. "The Impact of Descriptive Social Norms on Parental Leave Take-up Among Mothers." AEA RCT Registry. December 01. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.6838-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The participants will answer the following question: “If you become a mother, how many days (0-365) would you stay at home taking care of the child during the first year after childbirth?”. Before being presented with the question, the participants will see a norm manipulation (intervention) considering parental leave.

Intervention Start Date

2020-12-03

Intervention End Date

2020-12-10

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

The outcome in the survey experiment is the number of days the participant plans to stay at home taking care of the child during the first year after childbirth.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The survey experiment will be conducted online. The participants will be young females holding a UK citizenship. They will answer a question regarding their parental leave take-up intentions in case they would get a child. Before being presented with the question, the participants will see the norm manipulation in the experiment.

Experimental Design Details

This survey experiment will be conducted using Prolific (https://www.prolific.co). The participants will be females aged 25-35 holding a UK citizenship. They will answer the following question: “If you become a mother, how many days (0-365) would you stay at home taking care of the child during the first year after childbirth?”. Before being presented with the question, the participants will see the norm manipulation in the experiment, which constitutes different information about how many days other mothers in the UK stay at home taking care of the child during the first year after childbirth. Using a between-subjects design, the participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups:

• Control group: No explicit information about how many days mothers in the UK stay at home taking care of the child during the first year after childbirth.
• Treatment group 1: Information indicating that the number of days is high
• Treatment group 2: Information indicating that the number of days is low

The information given to participants in the high versus low treatment groups is based on a pilot study. In the pilot study, we targeted the same population (N=150) and asked participants “How many days do you think mothers in the UK on average stay at home to take care of the child during the first year (365 days) after childbirth?”. The respondents thought that mothers´ stay at home approximately 236 days on average. We decided to use 290 and 180 as the high and low descriptive norm, respectively. The full material and all survey questions are presented to the participants is found in the appendix.

Randomization Method

Randomization will be done using the Qualtrics survey.

Randomization Unit

Randomization is done at the individual level.

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

1,000 participants

Sample size: planned number of observations

1,000 participants

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Approximately one third of the sample will be in each treatment arm.

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

We have calculated the statistical power of detecting H1 and H2 (the main hypotheses) simultaneously as outlined at the EGAP webpage (http://egap.org/content/power-analysis-simulations-r). Based on the pilot study described above, we assume that women plan to stay home 230 days on average with a child during the first year after childbirth. We assume that the standard deviation is 60. Next, we assume that the effect of the high and low treatments is -23 and +23, respectively, which corresponds to a 10% decrease/increase in the number of days that women plan to stay home with their child the first year after childbirth. Given these assumptions, the power simulations show that we need about 450 respondents to have 80% percent power to detect that two main treatment effects simultaneously. In the end, we decided to sample 1,000 respondents.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB