We run an experiment to study the effects of Covid-19 lockdown in Italy on preferences for fairness and cooperation. Given the impossibility of having participants in the lab during the lockdown, we adopted an online methodology based on a multi-platform architecture that brings experimental subjects in a “Lab on the Web”. Results from standard Ultimatum and linear Public Good games show that the circumstances in which participants lived the lockdown significantly affect their behavior in the two games. In particular, participants are more selfish in the ultimatum bargaining and contribute more to the public good when social isolation is stronger. However, cooperation decreases when lockdown is longer. We interpret these results as evidence of “social embeddedness” to compensate for “social distancing”.

Laboratory experiments have been often replaced by online experiments in the last decade. This trend has been reinforced when academic and research work based on physical interaction had to be suspended due to restrictions imposed to limit the spread of Covid-19. Therefore, data quality and results from web experiments have become an issue which is currently investigated. Are there significant differences between lab experiments and online findings? We contribute to this debate via an experiment aimed at comparing results from a novel online protocol with traditional laboratory settings, using the same pool of participants. We find that participants in our experiment behave in a similar way across settings and that there are at best weakly significant and quantitatively small differences in behavior observed using our online protocol and physical laboratory setting. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40881-021-00114-8.

Search and switching costs are two market frictions that are well known in the literature for preventing people from switching to a new and cheaper provider. Previous experimental literature has studied these two frictions in isolation. However, field evidence shows that these two frictions frequently occur together. Recently, a theoretical framework has been developed (Wilson in Eur Econ Rev 56(6):1070–1086) which studies the interplay between these two costs. We report on an experiment testing this theory to see if individual behaviour with search and switching costs is in line with the theoretical predictions derived from the optimal choice rule of Wilson. The results show the crucial role of the search strategy: not only, according to Wilson model, the search cost has a greater deterrent impact on search than the switching costs, but also the sub-optimality of the search strategy is the major source of sub-optimality in the switching behaviour.