Primary Outcomes (end points)
Public Goods Game: Each respondent will play a game with three other MTurkers. All players will start with $50 each. Then, every player will have the possibility of contributing some of their $50 to a project, without knowing the contributions of the other players. The sum of the contributions made by the four players will then be multiplied by two, and all of the money will then be split equally among all four players. Thus, a player's total payoff consists of two parts: 1) The part of the $50 that the player did not contribute to the project, 2) plus the payoff the player receives from the project, which is equal to 0.5 x (the sum of the contributions made by all four players).Therefore, each player's total payoff is:($50 - the player's contribution to the project) + 0.5 x (the sum of the contributions made by all four players to the project). Once everyone has completed the survey, we will randomly form groups of four MTurkers. We will choose one group at random, and implement the choices made by the four players in that group.
Mechanisms Public Goods game: Directly after specifying their contribution in the public goods game, our participants will be asked various questions ecliciting beliefs about others' likely contributions, their fairness concerns and their understanding: How much money do you think the other players will contribute to the project on average? (Players are told that they receive 5 cents of they guess the other player's contributions correctly)
Imagine that each of the other three players contributed $25 to the project. How much money would you contribute to the project in that case?
Imagine that, of the other three players, one contributes $0, one contributes $25 and one contributes $50. How much money would you contribute to the project in that case? Please click on the slider to choose the amount.
Imagine that you wanted to earn as much money as possible from this game. How much money should you then contribute to the project? If you give the correct answer, you will receive an extra 5 cents.
Trust: We will ask our respondents to complete a game in which there are two players, whom we shall refer to as person A and person B. All of our respondent's (except for one) will play the role of person A. Person A and person B start with $50 each. Then, person A can choose to send some money to person B. Person B will receive 3 times the amount sent by person A. Then person B will have to choose how much money to send back to person A. Once everyone has completed the survey, we will randomly choose one participant in our survey who played the role of A to get their choice implemented and we will randomly choose one participant to play the role of B and get their choice implemented.
Mechanisms Trust Game: After completing the trust game:
Our respondent's will be asked the following question:
"What amount do you think will Person B send back to you?"
Third Party Punishment:
There are three players in this game: Player A, Player B and Player C. Our respondents will play the role of player C. All three players start with $100 each. This game has two stages. Stage 1: In this stage, Player A is the only one who has a decision to make. At the beginning of this stage, Player A receives an extra $100, which he or she can share with Player B. In particular, Player A can give either $0, $10, $20, $30, $40 or $50 to Player B. Stage 2: In this stage, Player C is the only one who has a decision to make. At the beginning of this stage, Player C receives an extra $50.
Player C can use this extra $50 to reduce Player A's payoff, based on how much money Player A gave to Player B. For every $1 that Player C spends, Player A's payoff goes down by $2. We then ask our respondents how much money they want to spend to reduce Player A's payoff, for all of Player A's possible choices.
Mechanisms Third Party Punishment Game:
Costless punishment: We ask our respondents to consider again case where Person A doesn't give any money to Person B. But this time, imagine that Person C does not need to give up some of their $50 in order to reduce Person A's payoff.
Fairness concerns: Moreover, we shed light on our respondents' fairness concerns by asking them the following question: In order to be fair, how much money should Person A give to Person B? Please click on the slider to choose the appropriate offer?
Negative Reciprocity: We ask our respondents to complete a game in which there are two players, whom we shall refer to as person 1 and person 2. All of our respondent's (except for one) will play the role of person 2. At the beginning of this game, person 1 receives \$100, while person 2 receives nothing. Then, person 1 has to make an offer to person 2 on how to split the $100. Person 2 chooses either to accept the offer made by person 1, or to refuse it. If person 2 refuses the offer, both players receive nothing. If person 2 accepts the offer, each player receives the amount specified in the offer. Then our respondents specify the minimum amount that person 1 would have to offer them, in order for them to accept their offer? Once everyone has completed the survey, we will randomly choose one participant in our survey who played the role of person 2 to get their choice implemented and we will randomly choose one participant to play the role of person 1 and get their choice implemented.
Mechanism Negative Reciprocity: After completing the ultimatum game, we ask the second mover the following question:
In order to be fair, what offer should person 1 make to person 2?
Cognitive Function: Raven’s Progressive Matrices: This task measures fluid intelligence. Each trial consists of a 3x3 matrix of figures, with the bottom right figure missing.
Respondents are asked to choose the correct figure, from a set of 8 candidate figures, which best completes the overall pattern of the matrix. Respondents must complete five matrices without any time limits. They receive a payoff of 5 cents for each correct answer. In this task, we measure the number of correct answers and reaction time. Risk-preferences: In addition, we include a standard risk-preference measure in which individuals choose one out of six lotteries with different levels of risk Eckel and Grossman (2003)
Financial worries scale: This 3-item questionnaire provides an addition manipulation check for our poverty primes. We ask respondents to self-report on a Likert scale how worried they are about their financial situation.