Abstract
A growing number of experimental studies focus on the differences between the lab and the field. One important difference between many lab and field experiments is how the endowment is obtained. By conducting a dictator game experiment, we investigate the influences of windfall and earned endowment on behavior in the laboratory and in the field. We find subjects donate more in both environments if the endowment is a windfall gain. However, although the experimental design was intended to control for all effects other than environment, there are significant differences in behavior between the lab and the field for both windfall and earned endowment. This points to the importance of discussing the context when interpreting both laboratory and field experiment results as well as when conducting replication studies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
It should however be noted that stake, selection of subjects, and the choice sets and time horizons of the experiment have been shown to have a significant impact on behavior. For experiments on stake size effects in dictator games, see e.g., Carpenter et al. (2005b) and Cherry et al. (2002) and on selection of subjects see, e.g., Fehr and List (2004). For effects of choice sets in dictator games see Bardsley (2008) and List (2007), who allow some of the subjects in a traditional dictator game to take money from the recipients’ endowments as well.
It is likely that subjects will feel more scrutinized in the lab than in the field. This is not to say that subjects in the natural field experiment do not feel scrutinized at all. Even if the experimenters assure subjects that their choices are private, they might still have the feeling of being observed by, for example, the charitable organization. Scrutiny is also related to the degree of anonymity in an experiment, which could be anything from publicly announced behavior to a double-blind procedure. The general finding is that when the degree of anonymity is reduced, people behave less selfishly (e.g., Hoffman et al. 1996; List et al. 2004; Rege and Telle 2004; Soetevent 2005; Alpizar and Martinsson 2012). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect a difference in behavior between the lab and the field due to scrutiny.
We are thankful to the anonymous referees and the editor for pointing this out.
At the time of the experiment, 1 US dollar = 6.85 Chinese Yuan.
This is China’s largest and most well-known charitable organization for poverty alleviation. Its main activities include community development, disaster relief, education and training, information technology services, relief, and shelter and housing provision. Most of functions of thus charity’s function is actually similar to that of the Red Cross. Traditionally, there has been a low level of trust and thereby low levels of donations to charities in China. However, in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake in May 12th, 2008, there were numerous media reports about the earthquake and how the donations that people made actually went to and helped the people in need.
We applied this approach in order to have an equal number of males and females in each treatment.
The recruitment procedure was the same in all experiments, and although the refusal rate was somewhat higher for Treatments 1 and 2, we do not expect any significant differences in subject pools due to the recruitment from a homogeneous subject pool consisting of students. However, not all of the recruited subjects showed up at their scheduled time in Treatments 1 and 2. Since the subjects in Treatments 2 and 4 answered the same survey, we can test whether there are any differences in a number of socio-economic characteristics reported in the survey. We cannot reject at a 5 % significance level the hypothesis of equal means or proportions between Treatments 2 and 4 in the variables gender, age, education, income, party membership and family size by using t-tests and proportion tests respectively (see Table 6 in Appendix 1).
Show-up payment is conventionally used in lab experiments, as, for example, in the study by Eckel and Grossman (1996), and in our case it was seen as a compensation for the inconvenience of getting to the lab. We gave the subjects the show-up payment after completion of the experiment with the intention of reducing the influence of an income effect, and of course the field experiment did not involve any show-up payment.
All the subjects could clearly see the box and that it was an official donation box from the charity organization. The donation box was opened at the office of the charity. At that time one of the experimenters was present and recorded the amount of money that was put in each envelope.
The survey was anonymous and we linked subjects’ survey information to their donation decisions by using an identification number on the envelopes. The survey was a face-to-face interview with questions about the use of plastic bags and the supermarket. The reason why we asked about the use of plastic bags was that four months before the experiment, a new policy was implemented in China requiring all retailers to charge money for providing plastic shopping bags. None of the subjects refused to participate in the survey at this stage. The survey took 20 minutes, and the experimenters were instructed to use the same amount of time for all surveys.
We considered several options for designing the field experiment. We opted for the “Thank you Customer campaign” since this way of giving money was accepted by subjects in our pilot experiments (at another university), while other ways resulted in many questions on why the money was being given and what was expected from them. Moreover, there is a proper noun for ```Thank you Customer’ campaign” in Chinese (directly translated as something like “customer appreciation campaign”). Moreover, there are two types of customer campaigns used by Chinese retailers. The first one is similar to what we used, which is an unconditional gift giving. The second one is a conditional gift giving where a voucher is given in proportion to the value of the purchased goods.
This campus supermarket has about 1,000 customers per day and is the closest supermarket for over 15,000 full-time students living in the residential area close to the university. In total we recruited 211 subjects over a few days, accounting for a fairly small proportion of the supermarket’s customers. It is therefore unlikely that we would approach the same costumer twice. To avoid spreading the information by, for example, word of mouth, we used several experimenters and conducted treatments 3 and 4 over 2 days. The experimenters were also asked to make sure that they did not recruit the same individual more than once. It should be noted that the cashier was the same person throughout the experiment and he consequently met all subjects. We are therefore confident that we did not include the same subject more than once.
Since we could not limit the individual donations to 50 Yuan, particularly not in the field setting, we have three subjects who donated more than 50 Yuan. We truncate these donations at 50 Yuan.
It should be noted that the lab experiment in Benz and Meier (2008) did not include a show-up fee.
Davis et al. (2010) find that even the timing of the payment of the show-up fee can affect subject behavior.
The full script used in Treatment 5 is exactly the same as in Treatment 1 (see Appendix 2), and in Treatment 6 the description of a show-up fee was deleted.
References
Alpizar, F., & Martinsson, P. (2012). Paying the price of sweetening your donation—evidence from a natural field experiment. Economics Letters, 114, 182–185.
Antonovics, K., Arcidiacono, P., & Walsh, R. (2009). The effects of gender interactions in the lab and in the field. Review of Economics and Statistics, 91, 152–162.
Arkes, H., Joyner, C., & Pezzo, M. (1994). The psychology of windfall gains. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 59, 331–347.
Bardsley, N. (2008). Dictator game giving: altruism or artifact? Experimental Economics, 11, 122–133.
Bardsley, N., Cubitt, R., Loomes, G., Moatt, P., Starmer, C., & Sugden, R. (2010). Experimental economics: rethinking the rules. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Benz, M., & Meier, S. (2008). Do people behave in experiments as in the field? Evidence from donations. Experimental Economics, 11, 268–281.
Camerer, C. (2003). Behavioral game theory. Scottsdale: Princeton University Press.
Carpenter, J., & Seki, E. (2010). Do social preferences increase productivity? Field experimental evidence from fishermen in Toyama Bay”. Economic Inquiry, 49, 612–630.
Carpenter, J., Burks, S., & Verhoogen, E. (2005a). Comparing students to workers: the effects of social framing on behavior in distribution games. In J. Carpenter, G. Harrison & J. List (Eds.), Field experiments in economics, Greenwich and London: JAI/Elsevier.
Carpenter, J., Verhoogen, E., & Burks, S. (2005b). The effect of stakes in distribution experiments. Economics Letters, 86, 393–398.
Cherry, T., Frykblom, P., & Shogren, J. (2002). Hardnose the dictator. American Economic Review, 92, 1218–1221.
Cherry, T., Kroll, S., & Shogren, J. (2005). The impact of endowment heterogeneity and origin on public good contributions: evidence from the lab. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 57, 357–365.
Cherry, T., & Shogren, J. (2008). Self-Interest, sympathy and the origin of the endowment. Economics Letters, 101, 69–72.
Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs (2007). Chinese philanthropy giving annual report 2007 (in Chinese).
Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs (2008). Chinese philanthropy giving annual report 2008 (in Chinese).
Clark, J. (2002). House money effects in public good experiments. Experimental Economics, 5, 223–231.
Davis, L. R., Joyce, B. P., & Roelofs, M. R. (2010). My money or yours: house money payment effects. Experimental Economics, 13, 189–205.
Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J. (1996). Altruism in anonymous dictator games. Games and Economic Behavior, 16, 181–191.
Falk, A., & Heckman, J. (2009). Lab experiments are a major source of knowledge in the social sciences. Science, 326, 535–538.
Fehr, E., & List, J. (2004). The hidden costs and returns of incentives-trust and trustworthiness among CEOs. Journal of the European Economic Association, 2, 743–771.
Harrison, G. (2007). House money effects in public good experiments: comment. Experimental Economics, 10, 429–437.
Hoffman, E., McCabe, K., & Smith, V. (1996). Social distance and other-regarding behavior in dictator games. American Economic Review, 86, 653–660.
Karlan, D. (2006). Using experimental economics to measure social capital and predict financial decisions. American Economic Review, 95, 1688–1699.
Konow, J. (2000). Fair shares: accountability and cognitive dissonance in allocation decisions. American Economic Review, 90, 1072–1091.
Kroll, S., Cherry, T., & Shogren, J. (2007). The impact of endowment heterogeneity and origin on contributions in best-shot public good games. Experimental Economics, 10, 411–428.
Laury, S., & Taylor, L. (2008). Altruism spillovers: are behaviors in context-free experiments predictive of altruism toward a naturally occurring public good? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 65, 9–29.
Levitt, S., & List, J. (2007). What do laboratory experiments measuring social preferences reveal about the real world? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21, 153–174.
List, J. (2006). The behaviouralist meets the market: measuring social preferences and reputation effects in actual transactions. Journal of Political Economy, 114, 1–37.
List, J. (2007). On the interpretation of giving in dictator games. Journal of Political Economy, 115, 482–493.
List, J. (2008). Economics: homo experimentalist evolves. Science, 321, 207–208.
List, J., Berrens, R., Bohara, A., & Kerkvilet, J. (2004). Examining the role of social isolation on stated preferences. American Economic Review, 94, 741–752.
Oxoby, R. J., & Spraggon, J. (2008). Mine and yours: property rights in dictator games. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 65, 703–713.
Rege, M., & Telle, K. (2004). The impact of social approval and framing on cooperation in public good situations. Journal of Public Economics, 88, 1625–1644.
Ruffle, B. J. (1998). More is better, but fair is fair: tipping in dictator and ultimatum games. Games and Economic Behavior, 23, 247–265.
Smith, V. L. (1982). Markets as economizers of information: experimental examination of the “Hayek hypothesis”. Economic Inquiry, 20, 165–179.
Smith, V. L. (2010). Theory and experiment: what are the questions? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 73, 3–15.
Soetevent, A. (2005). Anonymity in giving in a natural context: an economic field experiment in thirty churches. Journal of Public Economics, 89, 2301–2323.
Zizzo, D. (2010). Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments. Experimental Economics, 13, 75–98.
Acknowledgements
We have received valuable comments from two anonymous reviewers and the editor of Experimental Economics, Yu Duan, Martin Dufwenberg and seminar participants at the University of Gothenburg, Ratio Institute, the University of California Berkeley, and IMEBE 2009 in Granada. Financial support from Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to the Environmental Economics Unit at the University of Gothenburg, from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation, from Wilhelm and Martina Lundgrens Science Foundation and from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), and logistic support from the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation is gratefully acknowledged.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendices
Appendix 1: Table
Appendix 2: Script
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Carlsson, F., He, H. & Martinsson, P. Easy come, easy go. Exp Econ 16, 190–207 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9326-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9326-8