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Self-selection into laboratory experiments: pro-social motives versus monetary incentives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Johannes Abeler  and
Daniele Nosenzo
Johannes Abeler*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, IZA, and CESifo, Oxford, UK
Daniele Nosenzo*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
*
johannes.abeler@economics.ox.ac.uk
daniele.nosenzo@nottingham.ac.uk
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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 sign-up. We then invite the so-recruited subjects to the laboratory to measure their pro-social and approval motivations using incentivized experiments. We do not find any differences between the groups, suggesting that neither adding an appeal to help research, nor mentioning monetary incentives affects the level of social preferences and approval seeking of experimental subjects.

Keywords

MethodologySelection biasLaboratory experimentField experimentOther-regarding behaviorSocial preferencesSocial approvalExperimenter demandC90D03
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 195 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-014-9397-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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