Experimental methods: When and why contextual instructions are important

Alekseev, Aleksandr; Charness, Gary; Gneezy, Uri

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2016.12.005

Cited by 143 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Economic experiments also demonstrate that context affects incentivized behavior. Alekseev et al () survey the literature and conclude that context often but not invariably improves performance with the improvement being more likely if the task requires sophisticated reasoning. (While the survey did not contain any secretary problem studies, the task seems to qualify as requiring sophisticated reasoning.…”

Section: Relationship To the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

On the Importance of Context in Sequential Search

Hsiao

Kemp

Servátka

2020

Southern Economic Journal

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We experimentally investigate whether framing an individual‐choice decision in a market setting results in a different outcome than when the decision is described in a context‐free frame. We further explore whether the context effect is triggered solely by the frame or whether a richer descriptive content is required to establish familiarity with the decision‐making environment. Understanding what constitutes context is central to formulating practical recommendations aiming to improve the quality of individual decisions. Our results show that framing a sequential search problem as selling houses leads to better decisions than a context‐free frame. Manipulating whether or not the framed decision‐making scenario includes a description of the house, which would be naturally available in a real estate market, does not impact the length of search or the value of accepted offers.

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Section: Relationship To the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

On the Importance of Context in Sequential Search

Hsiao

Kemp

Servátka

2020

Southern Economic Journal

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“…to ensure that the median income was below the mean (consistent with the theoretical assumption needed to assure the median voter's choice of public provision would be supported if there was a majority-rule vote on public-only versus private-only provision). 5 To keep participants actively thinking about their decisions, incomes were assigned in a pre-determined pseudo-random order such that in each session participants experienced each of the five income levels in the first five periods and then again in the last five periods of the treatments in which they participated, but the income levels were experienced in a different order over each five period phase. Each of the five participants in a group was instructed to submit the tax rate that he or she prefers to have imposed on everyone in the group to finance the provision of the private good given that the median of the preferred tax rates would be selected and implemented.…”

Section: Laboratory Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[3] and [4] discuss the need to consider the framing context of an experiment before drawing general conclusions because without that context, the experimenter is unable to control for the contexts participants impose themselves. [5] discusses "when and why" the context of the controlled laboratory environment that may matter and describe three types of context: abstract, meaningful and evocative. If participants instinctively create their own context for the neutral investment environment in order to better understand the problems, and especially if different participants choose different contexts, it is possible that researchers may lose some control of their environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is difficult to know whether the health-context effects found in the study would translate to a mandatory public financing environment if a larger data sample was collected. Using the three categories of context discussed by [5], the neutral context and healthcare contexts investigated by [2] may be identified as "meaningful". However, the health care context also has an "evocative" quality to the extent that it motivates feeling with respect to the merit good character of health care that cannot easily be induced in the laboratory environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A Behavioral Economic Study of Tax Rate Selection by the Median Voter: Can the Tax Rate Be Influenced by the Name of the Publicly Provided Private Good?

Buckley¹,

Cameron²,

Cuff³

et al. 2018

TEL

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This paper presents the results of a behavioral economics study to test if the tax rates submitted to finance the public provision of a private good are influenced by changing the name of the private good. A revealed-preference laboratory decision-making experiment is used to test if participants choose significantly different tax rates to support provision of a private good named as a health care investment compared to an identical good named as a neutral monetary investment. Although some previous studies focusing on both framing and context effects find differences associated with health versus non-health environments, these studies have not involved voting over public provision of a private good. In our experimental environment, participants with different income endowments provide their preferred proportional tax rates for financing public provision of a private good in either a neutral or a health context. The implemented tax rate is the median preferred tax rate, and once the budget is determined, each participant receives the same quantity of the publicly provided private good. In each context, the payoff functions are the same. The only difference between the contexts is the name attached to the publicly provided private good, regardless of the name attached to the publicly provided private good, consuming it imposes no externalities. This controls for the positive externality characteristics of many health care goods, but not for preferences evoked by the merit good character of health care which factor How to cite this paper: Buckley, N

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“…The specific wording was based on multiple rounds of testing and evaluation during the pilot study. Based on this evaluation, we framed the public goods as 'projects' and contributions as 'investments', without expecting significant impact of this framing on game behavior (Alekseev et al, 2017); 5 we will use the terms interchangeably throughout the paper. Contact information to a designated contact person at the research consultancy was provided in case anything was unclear (20 of our 450 subjects used this possibility).…”

Section: Sampling and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crowdfunding Public Goods: An Experiment

Ansink

Koetse²,

Bouma

et al. 2017

SSRN Journal

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We assess the impact of different crowdfunding designs on the success of crowdfunded public goods using a lab-in-the-field experiment. Our design treatments aim to increase the efficiency of crowdfunding campaigns by raising aggregate contributions and decreasing possible coordination problems that may occur when potential donors are faced with a multitude of projects seeking contributions. Amongst others, we explore the potential of seed money and the impact of the attraction effect. Using a four-day time window we implement our crowdfunding experiment using a web-based user interface with multiple threshold public goods, similar in style to conventional crowdfunding websites. We find that such alternative crowdfunding designs affect efficiency via improving coordination, and not so much via affecting total contributions. These results are confirmed in a follow-up framed field experiment with actual nature conservation projects.JEL Classification: C93, H41, L31, Q57

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Experimental methods: When and why contextual instructions are important

Cited by 143 publications

References 45 publications

On the Importance of Context in Sequential Search

On the Importance of Context in Sequential Search

A Behavioral Economic Study of Tax Rate Selection by the Median Voter: Can the Tax Rate Be Influenced by the Name of the Publicly Provided Private Good?

Crowdfunding Public Goods: An Experiment

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