Nudging Recycling with a Mobile Game

Last registered on October 19, 2021

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Nudging Recycling with a Mobile Game

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0008393

Initial registration date

October 17, 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

October 19, 2021, 1:57 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Benjamin Ho

Affiliation

Vassar College

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Suchen Zhu

PI Affiliation

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2021-10-24

End date

2022-01-01

Keywords

Environment & Energy

Additional Keywords

Recycling, Mobile Games, Nudge

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Q50

Prior work

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

Abstract

At Vassar’s campus, as much as half of our recycling bags are discarded due to contamination (e.g. half empty soda bottles, or wrappers contaminated by food waste). Our office of sustainability has worked on an on-going campaign to better educate Vassar students on how to recycle, but signs and orientation events seem to have limited effectiveness. Can we do better with an App. We developed a game (runs in a browser, or on phone) that teaches players to properly recycle. Subjects are randomized into 4 treatments that changes the scoring rules of the game (gaining points vs losing points, and solo scores vs cooperative scores) and a control where they do the survey before playing the game.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Ho, Benjamin and Suchen Zhu. 2021. "Nudging Recycling with a Mobile Game." AEA RCT Registry. October 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.8393-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The survey obtains informed consent and will then measure how the game affects both their knowledge of recycling rules and their pro-social preferences by giving them a chance to win a $20 gift card, and the opportunity to donate part of their winnings to a curated selection of charities. Email will be optionally collected only to be able to send the winner a gift card and will otherwise be discarded. No other identifying information will be collected.
Subjects will be recruited through Amazon mTurk, online reddit forums, and during Vassar’s freshman orientation event. Since we intend to use the game during orientation, the game may be played be participants who may be under the age of 18 and may be undocumented.
Game distributed by web link either via Amazon mturk or directly to students during freshman orientation.
When students get the link to the game, they are automatically randomized into one of the five treatments, that only affects how the scoring but does not impact game play itself. No data is recorded at this stage, this also helps get past App Store approvals.

Intervention Start Date

2021-10-24

Intervention End Date

2022-01-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Recycling knowledge and Donation decisions after playing the mobile game.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We developed a game (runs in a browser, or on phone) that teaches players to properly recycle. Subjects are randomized into 4 treatments that changes the scoring rules of the game (gaining points vs losing points, and solo scores vs cooperative scores) and a control where they do the survey before playing the game

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Computer randomization.

Randomization Unit

Randomized at the individual mturk worker level.

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

350 mturk workers
(working on funding for extending sample size to 800 which will allow a minimum detectable size of 10%.)

Sample size: planned number of observations

350 mturk workers

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

70 per treatment (in a 2x2 design), and 70 in a control.

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

In a pilot, we observed an average donation of $6 with a standard deviation of 3. Combining treatments, should be able to detect a $1 difference in donation size.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB