Opting-in: Participation bias in economic experiments

Slonim, Robert; Wang, Carmen; Garbarino, Ellen; Merrett, Danielle

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2013.03.013

Cited by 71 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…There has indeed been extensive research on some of the complications identified by Levitt and List in the realm of social preferences, including studies on the effects of anonymity and scrutiny (Hoffman et al 1994, Hoffman, McCabe, andSmith 1996;Eckel and Grossman 1996;Dana, Cain, and Dawes 2006;Dana, Weber, and Kuang 2007;List 2007;Bardsley 2008;Franzen and Pointer 2012;Winking and Mizer 2013); the context and framing (Cherry, Frykblom, and Shogren 2002;List 2006;Branas-Garza 2007;Stoop, Noussair, and van Soest 2012;Stoop 2013); the size of the stakes (Slonim and Roth 1998;Cameron 1999;Munier and Zaharia 2003;Carpenter, Verhoogen, and Burks 2005;List and Cherry 2008); the subject pool (Gachter, Herrmann, and Thoni, 2004;List 2004List , 2006Carpenter and Seki 2005;Bellemare and Kroger 2007;Bellemare, Kroger, and van Soest, 2008;Carpenter, Connolly, and Myers 2008;Garbarino and Slonim 2009;Stoop et al 2012;Cleave, Nikiforakis, and Slonim 2013;Exadaktylos, Espin, and Branas-Garza 2013;Kessler, 2013;Stoop 2013); and the self-selection into lab experiments (Krawczyk 2011;Falk, Meier, and Zehnder 2013;Slonim et al 2013;Abeler and Nosenzo 2015). All these factors have been shown to matter, at least in some cases, which calls into question the idea that behavior in experimental social preference games can be immediately representative of social behavior outside the lab.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study

2019

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Matteo M. Galizzi Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political AbstractWe present a lab-field experiment designed to systematically assess the external validity of social preferences elicited in a variety of experimental games. We do this by comparing behavior in the different games with several behaviors elicited in the field and with self-reported behaviors exhibited in the past, using the same sample of participants. Our results show that the experimental social preference games do a poor job explaining both social behaviors in the field and social behaviors from the past. We also include a systematic review and meta-analysis of previous literature on the external validity of social preference games.2

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study

2019

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“…A recent literature has examined whether there is a selection bias into economic experiments, which would imply that participants are not representative of the student population from which they are drawn: while Cleave et al (2013) and Falk et al (2013) find no evidence of a selection bias with respect to pro-social inclination, Slonim et al (2013) show that lab participants are unrepresentative of the student population along a number of relevant characteristics. Moreover, Eckel and Grossman (2000) report that the recruitment method in lab experiments has a substantial impact on altruistic behavior.…”

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confidence: 99%

The limits of guilt

Balafoutas

Fornwagner

2017

J Econ Sci Assoc

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According to the theory of guilt aversion, agents suffer a psychological cost whenever they fall short of other people's expectations. In this paper, we suggest that there may be limits to this kind of motivation. We present evidence from an experimental dictator game showing that behavior is consistent with guilt aversion for relatively low levels of recipient expectations, roughly up to the point where the recipient expects half of the available surplus. Beyond that point the relationship between expectations and transfers becomes negative. Moreover, we examine this relationship at the individual level and establish a typology of subjects depending on how and whether they condition their behavior on recipient expectations.

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“…Most of these studies take the selection process as given and examine whether the selected sample differs from the total population (e.g., Cleave et al, 2013;Falk et al, 2013;Slonim et al, 2013), from other non-selected samples (e.g., Eckel and Grossman, 2000;Gaudecker et al, 2012;Anderson et al 2013), or from other selected samples (e.g., Burks et al, 2009;Belot et al, 2010;Anderson et al 2013). In contrast, our paper tries to influence the selection process directly to understand what brings subjects to the lab.…”

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confidence: 99%

Self-selection into laboratory experiments: pro-social motives versus monetary incentives

Abeler

Nosenzo

2014

Exp Econ

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A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. Laboratory experiments have become a wide-spread tool in economic research. Yet, there is still doubt about how well the results from lab experiments generalize to other settings. In this paper, we investigate the self-selection process of potential subjects into the subject pool. We alter the recruitment email sent to first-year students, either mentioning the monetary reward associated with participation in experiments; or appealing to the importance of helping research; or both. We find that the sign-up rate drops by two-thirds if we do not mention monetary rewards. Appealing to subjects' willingness to help research has no effect on sign-up. We then invite the so-recruited subjects to the laboratory to measure their pro-social and approval motivations using incentivized experiments. We do not find any differences between the groups, suggesting that neither adding an appeal to help research, nor mentioning monetary incentives affects the level of social preferences and approval seeking of experimental subjects.

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Opting-in: Participation bias in economic experiments

Cited by 71 publications

References 61 publications

On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study

On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study

The limits of guilt

Self-selection into laboratory experiments: pro-social motives versus monetary incentives

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