Belief Elicitation under Ambiguity

Last registered on September 14, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Belief Elicitation under Ambiguity
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0008197
Initial registration date
September 04, 2023

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
September 14, 2023, 12:38 PM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Technical University Munich

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Schulich School of Business, York University
PI Affiliation
Department of Economics, University of Exeter
PI Affiliation

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-09-25
End date
2024-09-30
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Beliefs play a critical role in many economic, political, and life decisions. Hence, researchers have been interested in eliciting individuals' beliefs to better understand their decision-making processes. A fundamental challenge in experimental economics has been creating incentives for experimental participants to truthfully report their beliefs. In recent years, researchers have developed sophisticated methods to elicit the beliefs of experimental participants in an incentive-compatible manner (see Schotter and Trevino, 2014; Schlag et al., 2015; Trautmann and van de Kuilen, 2015; Charness et al., 2021, for reviews). One state-of-the-art method to elicit beliefs is the binarized scoring rule (BSR), which is incentive compatible even under non-neutral risk preferences (Hossain and Okui, 2013). To date, the discussion around the incentive compatibility of belief elicitation methods remains agnostic about the influence of ambiguity. This is surprising in light of the fact that experimenters are often interested in beliefs about ambiguous events. In this project, we investigate how reported beliefs under the BSR deviate from the implied objective probabilities for ambiguous and risky events, and how such deviations depend on the level of detail used to explain the BSR, the stake size, and participants' ambiguity preferences. Finally, we examine the extent to which reported beliefs deviate in line with theoretical predictions based on individuals' ambiguity preferences.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Coutts, Alexander et al. 2023. "Belief Elicitation under Ambiguity." AEA RCT Registry. September 14. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.8197-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Our experiment consists of three individual parts. In Part A, we elicit participants' beliefs about ambiguous and risky events. In Part B and Part C, we elicit participants' ambiguity and risk preferences, respectively. Details of the experiment are provided in the pre-analysis plan.
Intervention Start Date
2023-09-25
Intervention End Date
2024-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The raw data consists of participants' belief reports about risky and ambiguous events for implied objective probabilities p ∈ {0.2, 0.5, 0.8}.
We use three outcome variables to measure the accuracy of participants' belief reports:
1) The first outcome variable is a dummy variable that classifies whether the reported belief deviates from the implied objective probability.
2) The second outcome variable is the absolute distance of the reported belief from the implied objective probability.
3) The third outcome variable is the absolute distance of the reported belief from the midpoint 0.5.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Our experiment consists of three individual parts. In Part A, we elicit participants' beliefs about ambiguous and risky events. In Part B and Part C, we elicit participants' ambiguity and risk preferences, respectively.

Further details of the experiment are provided in the pre-analysis plan.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Treatment assignment is done at the individual level by a computer program (oTree).
Randomization Unit
Individual level randomization
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
600 participants
Sample size: planned number of observations
600 participants
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Detailed High: 150 participants
Detailed Low: 150 participants
Simple High: 150 participants
Simple Low: 150 participants
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
German Association for Experimental Economic Research e.V.
IRB Approval Date
2021-10-20
IRB Approval Number
Qpj9q72n
IRB Name
York University Office of Research Ethics (ORE)
IRB Approval Date
2022-01-13
IRB Approval Number
e2022-013
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