Experimental Design Details
Participants will play four games: risk preference game, time preference game, dictator and trust game. Details of the games are described below.
Risk preference
Subjects will be given an amount of money and they can choose between two options:
Option 1: They can keep all the money and not invest, or
Option 2: They can invest specific amount of money.
If subjects choose option 2, we will toss a coin. If it is heads, subjects’ investment will be tripled; otherwise, they receive no money back from the investment. The variable will be used as control in robustness checks, as well as dependent variable to explore group differences if any.
Time preference
They will choose whether they want to receive the money early (with less money) or later (with more money). The variable will be used as control in robustness checks, as well as dependent variable, as well as dependent variable to explore group differences if any.
Dictator game
There will be two rounds. At the beginning, players will perform a task to earn 100,000VND. This 100,000VND is divided into 50,000VND for round 1 and 50,000VND for round 2. They will then decide the amount they want to donate to others. In each round, the lowest donation amount is 0VND and the highest is 50,000VND (in 1,000VND steps). Particularly, in round 1, they will decide how much they want to donate to an anonymous poor family in the same village. In round 2, they will decide how much they want to donate to an anonymous poor family who is prone to floods.
Trust game
In this game, two subjects, namely a player 1 and a player 2, participate in a two-stage game. At the beginning, subjects are randomly chosen to be player 1 or player 2.
Both player 1 and player 2 will receive 40,000 VND to start. Player 1 will decide the amount (between 0 and 40,000VND) he wants to keep and the amount he sends to player 2. The amount sent to player 2 will be tripled. For example, if player 1 selects to keep 30,000VND and send 10,000VND, then player 2 will receive 30,000VND (=10,000VND*3). In this case, player 2 has a total of 70,000VND (30,000VND plus the original 40,000VND). Player 2 now decides how much of this 70,000VND to send back to player 1 and how much to keep.
If people are more risk-averse and more patient, they may increase their subjective assessment of the likelihood of future flooding in particular and other disasters in general. This in turn can reduce their generosity in response to potential negative events.
Survey
After the experiments, subjects will be asked a series of questions. These will be used to explore mechanisms relating to wellbeing, stress and networks. SES-related questions will be used as potential controls.