AEA RCT Registry

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Gender and lying in delegation experiments

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0009472

Initial registration date

May 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

May 23, 2022, 5:21 PM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name

Frauke von Bieberstein

Affiliation

University of Bern

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Eberhard Feess

PI Affiliation

Victoria University, Wellington

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2022-05-17

End date

2024-05-31

Keywords

Behavior, Gender

Additional Keywords

Lying, cheating, delegation, gender

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

Subjects in our online experiment are randomly assigned to groups of three. All group members observe the same outcome of a lottery, which can be HIGH or LOW. The group receives the winning price if and only if the group member in charge reports HIGH. Our experiment has three treatments. (i) In treatment SINGLE, each of the three group members is asked to report the outcome. Each of their reports is then chosen with the same probability of one third to determine the payoff. (ii) In treatment DELEGATION, one subject is randomly chosen to be the first mover (FM). The FM can report HIGH or LOW, but can also delegate the report to a second mover (SM), who is also randomly chosen. This SM needs to decide between HIGH and LOW. SMs are asked for their report under the assumption that they can actually make a report (i.e. that the FM delegates). (iii) In treatment MULTISTAGE DELEGATION, the SM can delegate as well. If so, the third mover (TM) is asked for the final report.

Our main research question is how the frequency of lying differs between males and females. We will consider this question across treatments for two settings, with and without delegation opportunity. Previous literature found gender differences in lying behavior when no delegation is possible. We therefore predict that more males than females will lie in this setting as well. We are not aware of previous research regarding gender differences in lying behavior with the possibility to delegate. We therefore have no hypothesis whether the gender difference will be more, less, or equally pronounced with or without delegation.
We consider the differences between treatments in another research project (AEA RCT "The impact of delegation on the frequency of lying: Theory and experimental evidence")

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Feess, Eberhard and Frauke von Bieberstein. 2022. "Gender and lying in delegation experiments." AEA RCT Registry. May 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.9472-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Online experiment. Between-subject design. In treatment SINGLE, all three subjects are in the same role. In the other two treatments, subjects are randomly assigned to the three roles. Each subject makes just one decision, reporting HIGH or LOW, or delegating the report (for FMs in treatment DELEGATION and for FMs and SMs in treatment MULTISTAGE DELEGATION). Subjects also fill out a non-incentivized questionnaire where we ask for gender, age, the belief about how many subjects choose HIGH or LOW when the outcome is LOW (and delegate when applicable), preferences for delegating and being delegated to, and willingness to take risks.

The study will be conducted on Amazon MTurk, a large online platform for surveys and market research. We restrict the sample to participants whose country of residence are the USA, who have at least 500 approved assignments, and whose submissions have been approved in at least 95% of the cases. We impose these restrictions to ensure a high data quality.

Intervention Start Date

2022-05-23

Intervention End Date

2022-07-17

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

All our outcomes relate to the case when the outcome of the lottery is LOW (we can observe the outcome of the lottery, which is revealed to the subjects). Our primary outcome is the frequency of HIGH reports for males compared to females.
We will consider two settings separately and we will combine all data for these settings across treatments:
Setting 1: The situation where there is a possibility to delegate
Setting 2: The situation when there is no possibility to delegate

In some specifications, we will control for age, the belief about how many subjects choose HIGH or LOW (and delegate when applicable) and for other variables taken from the questionnaire as well as for passing an attention checker in the questionnaire.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Subjects in our online experiment are randomly assigned to groups of three. All group members observe the same outcome of a lottery, which can be HIGH or LOW. The group receives the winning price if and only if the group member in charge reports HIGH. Our experiment has three treatments. (i) In treatment SINGLE, each of the three group members is asked to report the outcome. Each of their reports is then chosen with the same probability of one third to determine the payoff. (ii) In treatment DELEGATION, one subject is randomly chosen to be the first mover (FM). The FM can report HIGH or LOW, but can also delegate the report to a second mover (SM), who is also randomly chosen. This SM needs to decide between HIGH and LOW. SMs are asked for their report under the assumption that they can actually make a report (i.e. that the FM delegates). (iii) In treatment MULTISTAGE DELEGATION, the SM can delegate as well. If so, the third mover (TM) is asked for the final report.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Computer (online experiment)

Randomization Unit

Experimental session for the treatment and individual for the specific role

Was the treatment clustered?

No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

same as observations.

Sample size: planned number of observations

About 4’200 finishing the task We will exclude subjects that: - do not complete the MTurk task within 45 minutes of starting; - exit and then re-enter the task as a new subject (as these individuals might see multiple treatments); - are not approved for any other reason (e.g. not having a valid MTurk ID); - do answer two or more control questions incorrectly: these subjects do not take part in the decision task and are transferred to a dropout page. This procedure is explicitly described at the start of the instructions.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

600 (treatment SINGLE) and 1’800 (both delegation treatments); we aim to have about 50% women and 50% men in each treatment.

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

We conducted a pilot test of the treatment SINGLE, where about 60% of participants lied, and the difference in the lying probability between males and females was 10 percentage points. Based on this data and a two-sided Chi2-test, an error probability of 0.05, a power of 0.80, and 1’800 observations for each setting, we are able to detect a difference in proportions of 4.5 percentage points between males and females.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

Ethics committee of the Faculty of Business, Economics, and Social Sciences at the University of Bern

IRB Approval Date

2022-05-19

IRB Approval Number

162022

Analysis Plan