Addressing Sucker Aversion

Last registered on March 20, 2023

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Addressing Sucker Aversion

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0007982

Initial registration date

July 20, 2021

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

July 23, 2021, 4:11 PM EDT

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

Last updated

March 20, 2023, 2:20 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

New York

Primary Investigator

Name

Sandra Goff

Affiliation

Bates College

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Rachel Dentler

PI Affiliation

Skidmore College

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2021-07-21

End date

2021-07-31

Keywords

Behavior, Welfare

Additional Keywords

aversion, sucker, donation, charity, pro-social, beneficiary, risk, policy

JEL code(s)

C91, D64, D8, D91

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

Our work studies sucker aversion, an aversion to being or being seen as a naïve cooperator. In our study, suckers are identified as people who use the possibility (no matter how miniscule) that an undeserving other (a country club) might receive a payoff as an excuse to forego donating to charity. We specifically investigate the relationship between sucker aversion types and a set of information treatments. To test our hypotheses, we implement a Qualtrics survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk with about 400 participants.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Dentler, Rachel and Sandra Goff. 2023. "Addressing Sucker Aversion." AEA RCT Registry. March 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.7982-1.1

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Participants make choices within a series of price lists similar to Exley (2016) and Goff (2021). Afterwards, they receive information about a charitable organization and are asked whether they would like to donate a portion of their bonus to the charity. The information the participant receives regarding the charity is randomized.

Intervention Start Date

2021-07-21

Intervention End Date

2021-07-24

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Lottery valuation (V), choice of lottery or certain payoff (A), donation behavior (donated/didn't donate (D) AND donation amount as percent of bonus (S)), participant type, policy support

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Please see pre-analysis plan document for detailed descriptions.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

After implementing the procedures from Goff (2021), we randomly present participants with different information conditions about a charitable organization, and then ask them to donate a portion of their earned bonus. We include four different informational conditions (one control and three treatments) to assess how information affects donation behavior: 1) a control in which participants will receive only a basic description of the charity, 2) basic description + information about financial management of charitable funds, 3) basic description + information about a specific beneficiary meant to create an identifiable victim effect, the phenomenon where a donor gives more when there is a specific identified individual that they are helping as opposed to a larger group, and 4) basic description + a warm glow message in which the participant will receive information about how their donation will help make them feel happier and feel like a better person for helping others. Rather than focus on the benefits to the recipient of the donation, this final condition is designed to trigger the participant’s personal feelings of “warm-glow” from giving.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization to information condition will be determined by a Qualtrics procedure.

Randomization Unit

Individuals

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

400 individuals

Sample size: planned number of observations

400

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

100 general info, 100 impact info, 100 identifiable victim, 100 warm glow

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

Using an online a priori calculator for multiple regression analysis, a minimum sample size of 345 participants is necessary to find an effect size of 0.10 at α = 0.01 with a statistical power of 0.90 and approximately 18 predictors. We will recruit a sample size 400 participants to ensure statistical power of at least 0.80 with exclusions.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB