Viewpoint: On the generalizability of lab behaviour to the field

Abstract

Abstract. We can think of no question more fundamental to experimental economics than understanding whether, and under what circumstances, laboratory results generalize to naturally occurring environments. In this paper, we extend Levitt and List (2006) to the class of games in which financial payoffs and ‘doing the right thing’ are not necessarily in conflict. We argue that behaviour is crucially linked to not only the preferences of people, but also the properties of the situation. By doing so, we are able to provide a road map of the psychological and economic properties of people and situations that might interfere with generalizability of laboratory result from a broad class of games.

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

“…First, we do not see our research as addressing any dispute about lab versus field experimentation. As noted by authors like Harrison and List (2004), List and Levitt (2007b), List and Reiley (2008), Roth (2008Roth ( , 2015, Falk and Heckman (2009) (2015), or Kessler and Vesterlund (2015), among others, the relationship between lab and field experiments is a symbiotic one, with the two approaches complementing each other. Both lab and field experiments have their own strengths and weaknesses.…”

“…Lab experiments, for instance, are important because of their ability to tightly control the environment and isolate causal relationships, to closely reproduce conditions of theoretical models, and to replicate past findings. Furthermore, they can provide insights into important behavioral patterns prior to moving into the field (Levitt and List 2007b). There are indeed countless types of laboratory experiments in the social and behavioral sciences, and many of them have proved to be invaluable in uncovering behavioral principles of relevance for real-world phenomena outside the lab.…”

The lab versus the virtual lab and virtual field—An experimental investigation of trust games with communication

“…Academic debates on the merits of the laboratory versus the field have contrasted the relatively greater control in the lab with the better realism and context of the field (e.g., Harrison and List, 2004;Levitt and List, 2007a, 2007b, 2009. The emergence of the virtual world as an environment where tens of thousands of residents interact provides a possible compromise in that it gives the researcher reasonable control while allowing for interaction in an environment familiar to virtual world residents (Bainbridge, 2007;Bloomfield, 2007;Castronova, 2001).…”

Group membership, team preferences, and expectations

“…The minimal group should be considered a "peer demand effect", rather than an 13 For general discussions of the problem of external validity in experimental economics see e.g. Guala (2005), Schram (2005), Levitt and List (2007), Bardsley et al (2009). "experimenter's demand effect", which makes one think that the validity of group identity extends beyond laboratory walls.…”