Effects of Double-Anonymity on Pro- and Anti-Social Behavior: Experimental Evidence from a Lab in the Field

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Title: Effects of Double-Anonymity on Pro- and Anti-Social Behavior: Experimental Evidence from a Lab in the Field
Authors: Vorlaufer, Tobias
ORCID of the author: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1586-5715
Abstract: This paper examines whether different degrees of subject-experimenter anonymity influence pro- and antisocial behavior in lab-in-the-field experiments. To do this, a Dictator Game (DG) and a Joy-of-Destruction Mini-Game (JoD) were conducted with 480 subjects in rural Namibia. In addition to a strict doubleanonymous treatment two single-anonymous treatments are introduced. One of them involves the disclosure of decisions directly to the experimenter. Thereby, it is possible to disentangle the effect of pure double-anonymity from the procedure of the decision-making. The presented results carry relevant implications for a methodologically sound implementation of lab-in-the-field experiments. Both in the DG and JoD, strict double-anonymous procedures do not produce significantly different behavior than under single-anonymity. Whether revealing decisions personally to the experimenter influences individual behavior cannot be consistently answered with the obtained results. The personal disclosure leads to significantly more pro-social and less anti-social behavior in one out of two treatment comparisons. From a conservative perspective, researchers are however advised to assure sufficient privacy for subjects from experimenters during the decision-making process.
Citations: Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 81, Elsevier, 2019, 216-225.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.48693/3
https://osnadocs.ub.uni-osnabrueck.de/handle/ds-202112035679
Subject Keywords: Field experiments; dictator game; joy-of-destruction; double anonymity; experimenter-demand effect
Issue Date: 3-Jul-2019
License name: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Germany
License url: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/de/
Type of publication: Einzelbeitrag in einer wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift [article]
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