Industry 4.0 suppliers' preferences

Last registered on March 19, 2022
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Industry 4.0 suppliers' preferences
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0009000
Initial registration date
February 19, 2022

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
February 24, 2022, 12:59 PM EST

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

Last updated
March 19, 2022, 8:23 AM EDT

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

Locations

Country
China
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Ke Wang
Affiliation
Shanghai University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Yang Liu
PI Affiliation
Shanghai University，School of Management
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2021-11-24
End date
2022-07-31
Keywords
Behavior, Lab
Additional Keywords
ESG, Sustainability, Industrial Platform, Ambiguity Perception, Willingness To Pay
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Industrial platform, promoting cooperation between suppliers of manufactures, is attracting entrepreneurs’ active engagements. Meanwhile, trillions of dollars are invested in sustainable businesses each year. However, we still lack a complete understanding of how entrepreneurs make their decisions on the choice of industrial platforms in accordance with their social preferences. The literature mainly resorts to industrial platforms’ sustainability strategies, but entrepreneurs, as industrial platforms’ users, are neglected. We investigate users’ social preferences on industrial platforms, including their trade-off strategies, beliefs on industrial platforms’ profitability of high ESG，and ambiguity perceptions on ESG factors of industrial platforms, in an incentivized lab experiment. We employed a discrete choice experiment to obtain subjects’ willingness to pay on ESG and other determinators of industrial platform selection and designed methods to evaluate their perception of the level of ambiguity formally. We found that when it comes to high ESG industrial platforms, subjects are likely to forgo 3.062% annual profit, expected higher profitability, and perceived lower ambiguity. This suggests that the unincentivized survey of ESG-related expected profitability could be systematically biased. Our results contribute to understanding the true motives of industrial platform selection combined with ESG factors.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Wang, Ke and Yang Liu. 2022. "Industry 4.0 suppliers' preferences ." AEA RCT Registry. March 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9000-3.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date
2022-02-03
Intervention End Date
2022-02-04

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1） Regression results of Discrete Choice Experiment and Willingness to pay of ESG
2） True Belief on ESG
3） Risk perception, Ambiguity perception on ESG
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Our lab experiment includes a discrete choice experiment to obtain subjects’ willingness to pay on ESG and other determinators of industrial platform selection, an incentivized survey to elicit their beliefs on high ESG industrial platforms’ profitabilities, and an ESG information treatment to elicit their ambiguity perceptions on ESG information.
Experimental Design Details
We first ask subjects to choose 1 from 3 alternatives in 31 choice tasks. We set status-quo alternative and randomize the three alternatives in each choice task.
Then we ask subjects to answer survey questions of high ESG industrial platforms’ profitability and their most evaluated factors when choosing industrial platforms. All survey questions are incentived.
At last, we randomly separate subjects into 2 groups and employ adapted Elsburg Urn to evaluate their ambiguity perceptions. One hundred high-ESG industrial platforms were randomly selected.
The intervention group is told that all of the selected one hundred industrial platforms are high-ESG, and the baseline group doesn’t have any ESG information. Subjects are then asked to bet on the randomly selected industrial platform’s profitability from the 100 industrial platform by paying a highest price they would like.
Randomization Method
Randomization done within the survey platform, oTree.
Randomization Unit
Randomization unit (questions' version) is done within the survey program by oTree.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
We plan to recruit around 60 subjects in the experiment lab in Shanghai University.
Sample size: planned number of observations
We plan to collect 60 valid survey responses.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
We will have two treatment groups: baseline group and intervention group. We will have 30 observations per group.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Committee of Shanghai University
IRB Approval Date
2021-12-17
IRB Approval Number
ECSHU 2021-001
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