Risk as Excuses for Selfishness in Social Decisions: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

Last registered on March 03, 2022
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Risk as Excuses for Selfishness in Social Decisions: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0008697
Initial registration date
December 15, 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
December 19, 2021, 12:50 PM EST

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

Last updated
March 03, 2022, 9:05 PM EST

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

Locations

Country
China
Region
Beijing

Primary Investigator

Name
Wanxin DONG
Affiliation
Renmin University of China
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Jiakun Zheng
PI Affiliation
Renmin University of China
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2022-02-27
End date
2022-04-30
Keywords
Behavior, Lab, Welfare
Additional Keywords
risk preferences, altruism, selfishness, prosocial behavior, externalities, moral wiggle room
JEL code(s)
D71, D80, D91
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Exley (2016) has examined charitable giving behavior under risk, i.e., how much one is willing to improve others’ welfare while sacrificing one’s own welfare. She has found that individuals use risk as excuses not to give when there is self-partner tradeoff. People become more averse to partners’ risk and less averse to self risk. However, many real-life situations are about how much one is ready to benefit from sacrificing others’ welfare or to sacrifice one’s own welfare to benefit others. We investigate the role of risk in these types of situations. In our laboratory experiment, participants make a series of decisions between risky and riskless gains or losses for themselves or their partners. Their altered risk responses between no self-partner tradeoff and self-partner tradeoff will reflect the existence of excuse-driven risk preferences. We expect a reverse pattern of individual risk attitudes in the loss domain, i.e., more seeking to partners’ risk and less seeking to self risk. Moreover, individuals tend to exhibit more excuse-driven risk preferences in the loss domain.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
DONG, Wanxin and Jiakun Zheng. 2022. "Risk as Excuses for Selfishness in Social Decisions: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment." AEA RCT Registry. March 03. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.8697-2.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We measure excuse-driven risk preferences in the gain domain and loss domain. Considering the setting of payoffs, we adopt a between-subject design. In each experiment, there are four blocks of decision tasks including 30 multiple price lists
and a moral wiggle room including three decision games. Price lists in each block only differ in 7 different probabilities, i.e. {95%, 90%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%}, and four blocks are presented in a random order for each participant.
Intervention Start Date
2022-03-05
Intervention End Date
2022-03-11

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
- partner-specific values in the gain and loss domain respectively
- participants' valuations of different lotteries
- excuse-driven types of participants
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Our experimental design is mainly based on Exley (2016)’s methods, but we modify and apply in the gain domain and loss domain. We adopt a between-subject design. Participants are required to complete thirty price lists respectively in the gain and loss experiment. Thirty price lists include one “normalization” price list, one buffer price list and 28 valuation price lists. Each price list consists of a series of binary decisions. Through these price lists, we could measure individuals' responses to different risk situations.
In each experiment, participants first complete a normalization price list that determines partner-specific X values. Partner-specific X values are used later to determine the non-zero gains or losses of partner lotteries and partner certain amounts in valuation price lists. The second one is a buffer price list similar to the normalization one. After completing the first two price lists, participants complete 28 valuation price lists, which are used to estimate individuals’ lottery valuations. In this part, participants face four types of decision tasks respectively in the gain and loss experiment – {self gain lottery, partner gain lottery} X {self gain certain amount, partner gain certain amount} and {self loss lottery, partner loss lottery} X {self loss certain amount, partner loss certain amount}.
After participants complete the price lists, they need answer three moral wiggle room questions. The first one is a choice-to-reveal question, the second one is a revealed-unaligned-state question, and the third one is a revealed-aligned-state question. Through moral wiggle room, we plan to examine the correlation between excuse-driven risk preferences and excuse-driven types of participants.
Experimental Design Details
Please see "Experimental Design” document for detailed descriptions.
Randomization Method
randomization done by a computer.
Randomization Unit
individual.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
100 undergraduate students from Renmin University of China in each of the gain and loss experiments, that is 200 students in total
Sample size: planned number of observations
100 undergraduate students from Renmin University of China in each of the gain and loss experiments, that is 200 students in total
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Due to the between-subject design, 100 subjects in the sample make the gain experiment, and 100 subjects make the loss experiment.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Lab of National Governance and Development, Renmin University of China
IRB Approval Date
2021-12-13
IRB Approval Number
RUCecon-202112-1
Analysis Plan

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