Self-selection into Economics Experiments is Driven by Monetary Rewards

Johannes Abeler and Daniele Nosenzo

No 2013-03, Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham

Abstract: 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 signup. We then invite the so-recruited subjects to the laboratory to measure a range of preferences in incentivized experiments. We do not find any differences between the three groups. Our results show that student subjects participate in experiments foremost to earn money, and that it is therefore unlikely that this selection leads to an over-estimation of social preferences in the student population.

Keywords: Methodology; Selection bias; Laboratory experiment; Field experiment; Otherregarding behavior; Social preferences; Social Approval; Experimenter Demand. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dcm, nep-evo and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cedex/documents/paper ... on-paper-2013-03.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Self-Selection into Economics Experiments Is Driven by Monetary Rewards (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:not:notcdx:2013-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jose V Guinot Saporta ().