Do women shy away from risky skill games?

This project is an attempted self-replication of the main results in Lambrecht and Oechssler (2021, Experiment 1):

"... in High var skill, females play 5.45 rounds on average (CI = [3.95; 6.96]) while males play 14.44 rounds on average (CI = [10.44; 18.44]); t-test, p = .000). Thus, the main result of the paper is
Result 1 In skill gambles with high variance, females play less than half as many rounds as males do."

In this registered experiment we attempt to replicate this result for treatment High var skill with 150 subjects (75 men, 75 women) on Prolific using UK based subjects. The design is identical to Exp. 1.

Given the observed means of rounds played in Exp. 1, we would expect a power of 99%.
STATA command:
power twomeans 5.45 (14.44), n(50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400) sd1(6.62) sd2(16.89) graph

2022-02-04

2022-02-28

rounds played (by gender)

bet size, reel stopping success, continuation probability

In the main experiment, subjects play repeatedly an online version of a slot machine or one-armed bandit. In each round they receive an endowment and have to decide what share of that endowment they want to bet.The slot machine has two reels with 6 symbols each. The right reel always stops randomly some time after the STOP-button is pressed. The behavior of the left reel depends on the treatment. In our
chance treatments, the left reel also stops randomly. In our skill treatments, subjects are able to stop the left reel by pressing the stop button with a random delay which makes the stopping time slightly less predictable. Nevertheless, given that the symbols always appear in the same order within a round, subjects with a good reaction time can become pretty good at stopping the left reel at the desired symbol. As explained above, one dimension is whether the outcome depends purely on chance or at least partially on skill. The second dimension is low versus high variance, while expected payoffs are held constant.

implemented in otree code, i.e. done by a computer

individual

No

150 UK citizens

150 UK citizens x 50 rounds

75 male and 75 female

Given the data from Lambrecht and Oechssler (2021, Experiment 1) and observed standard deviations of 16.9 and 6.6 for the two groups, we estimate the MDES to be a difference of about 5.9 rounds played, which is roughly 40% of the mean of the baseline (male).

analysis.pdf

A risky skill game is a game in which skill plays an important role but outcomes are also strongly influenced by random factors. Examples are poker or blackjack but also many economic activities like trading on financial markets. In an online experiment we let subjects choose how often they want to play a risky skill game. We find that women play only half as many rounds in risky skill games with high variance. In contrast, there is no gender difference if the outcomes depend exclusively on chance or (mostly) on skill. Our results indicate that previous research on gender effects in risky environments (such as tournaments) may have greater applicability than previously thought.

Marco Lambrecht, Joerg Oechssler, Do women shy away from risky skill games?, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 211, 2023, Pages 241-250, ISSN 0167-2681, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.04.019.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.04.019