Experimental Design Details
The conjoint survey experiment is carried out among a non-probability sample of US residents. Participants are recruited via Prolific, with enrollment limited to individuals with current residence in the US (using Prolific’s prescreening feature). In order to ensure a racially diverse sample of respondents, we will recruit 750 White respondents and 750 non-White respondents. This quota sampling approach is accomplished using Prolific’s prescreening feature. Specifically, two identical studies are created in Prolific, except that one study limits enrollment to only White participants (using Prolific’s demographic category “Ethnicity (Simplified)”) and the other study limits enrollment to non-White participants.
All survey respondents are presented with a job choice task. First, respondents are exposed to an introductory text describing the task and providing basic information about a city government job (as Community Active Worker on a community empowerment program called Project Hope). Next, respondents are exposed to a paired profiles conjoint in which two specific job arrangement profiles—A and B—for the Community Active Worker job are presented next to each other in a conjoint table.
The first column of the conjoint table lists eight job attributes. The second and third column list the job attribute values (for those eight job attributes) for jobs A and B, respectively. All job attribute values are assigned at random.
The exact job attributes and job attribute values appear under ‘INTERVENTIONS.’
As our outcome measure, all respondents are asked to indicate their choice between the two job arrangement profiles (“Which of the two jobs would you personally prefer?”). Response options are “Job A” and “Job B.”
Respondents are presented with similar paired profiles conjoints (i.e., involving the same job attributes and random assignment of job attribute values for the Community Active Worker position) two more times. Thus, each respondent will see a total of three pairs of job profiles.
Based on existing theory and research, we derive and test the following hypotheses:
H1: PfP (vs. fixed pay) affect individuals’ job attraction.
Moreover, we theorize that socio-demographic characteristics (race, gender, age) moderate the effects of PfP (vs. fixed pay) on individuals’ job attraction. In particular, we derive and test the following hypotheses:
H2a: PfP (vs. fixed pay) has negative impact on job attraction for racial minority individuals (vs. racial majority individuals)
H2b: PfP (vs. fixed pay) has negative impact on job attraction for women (vs. men)
H2c: PfP has negative impact on job attraction for older individuals (vs. younger individuals)