IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v99y2023ics0167487023000673.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

App-based experiments

Author

Listed:
  • Pin, Paolo
  • Rotesi, Tiziano

Abstract

We elicit and compare behaviors in the laboratory and on a smartphone application that we developed for this study. Our participant pool consists of university students who are subjected to identical incentives and selection criteria. Behavior is similar across samples in measures of attitudes towards risk, effort, cognitive ability, strategic reasoning, trust, and lying aversion. Additionally, participants show comparable beliefs about the actions of the other players. We also identify certain quantitative differences between the two groups. Specifically, subjects using the app donate more in the dictator game, are faster, and show less consistency. These findings show the potential of using smartphone applications to organize experiments, and emphasize the importance of a clear and simple interface in this environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Pin, Paolo & Rotesi, Tiziano, 2023. "App-based experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:99:y:2023:i:c:s0167487023000673
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2023.102666
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487023000673
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102666?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph P. Romano & Michael Wolf, 2005. "Stepwise Multiple Testing as Formalized Data Snooping," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(4), pages 1237-1282, July.
    2. Catherine C. Eckel & Philip J. Grossman, 2002. "Sex Differences and Statistical Stereotyping in Attitudes Toward Financial Risk," Monash Economics Working Papers archive-03, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    3. Jérôme Hergueux & Nicolas Jacquemet, 2015. "Social preferences in the online laboratory: a randomized experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 251-283, June.
    4. Stahl Dale O. & Wilson Paul W., 1995. "On Players' Models of Other Players: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 218-254, July.
    5. Johannes Abeler & Armin Falk & Lorenz Goette & David Huffman, 2011. "Reference Points and Effort Provision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 470-492, April.
    6. Nobuyuki Hanaki & Takayuki Hoshino & Kohei Kubota & Fabrice Murtin & Masao Ogaki & Fumio Ohtake & Naoko Okuyama, 2022. "Comparing data gathered in an online and a laboratory experiment using the Trustlab platform," ISER Discussion Paper 1168, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    7. Johnson, Noel D. & Mislin, Alexandra A., 2011. "Trust games: A meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 865-889.
    8. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri & Rasocha, Vlastimil, 2021. "Experimental methods: Eliciting beliefs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 234-256.
    9. Folli, Dominik & Wolff, Irenaeus, 2022. "Biases in belief reports," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    10. Sofianos, Andis, 2022. "Self-reported & revealed trust: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    11. Nobuyuki Hanaki & Takahiro Hoshino & Kohei Kubota & Fabrice Murtin & Masao Ogaki & Fumio Ohtake & Naoko Okuyama, 2022. "Comparing data gathered in an online and a laboratory experiment using the Trustlab platform," ISER Discussion Paper 1168r, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, revised Jun 2022.
    12. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Wang, Stephanie W., 2009. "On eliciting beliefs in strategic games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 98-109, August.
    13. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    14. Giamattei, Marcus & Lambsdorff, Johann Graf, 2019. "classEx — an online tool for lab-in-the-field experiments with smartphones," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 223-231.
    15. Nagel, Rosemarie, 1995. "Unraveling in Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1313-1326, December.
    16. Urs Fischbacher & Franziska Föllmi-Heusi, 2013. "Lies In Disguise—An Experimental Study On Cheating," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 525-547, June.
    17. Anderhub, Vital & Muller, Rudolf & Schmidt, Carsten, 2001. "Design and evaluation of an economic experiment via the Internet," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 227-247, October.
    18. Felix Bader & Bastian Baumeister & Roger Berger & Marc Keuschnigg, 2021. "On the Transportability of Laboratory Results," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 50(3), pages 1452-1481, August.
    19. Hermann, Daniel & Brenig, Mattheus, 2022. "Dishonest online: A distinction between observable and unobservable lying," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    20. Uri Gneezy & Jan Potters, 1997. "An Experiment on Risk Taking and Evaluation Periods," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 631-645.
    21. Joseph P. Romano & Michael Wolf, 2005. "Exact and Approximate Stepdown Methods for Multiple Hypothesis Testing," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 100, pages 94-108, March.
    22. Offerman, Theo & Sonnemans, Joep & Schram, Arthur, 1996. "Value Orientations, Expectations and Voluntary Contributions in Public Goods," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(437), pages 817-845, July.
    23. Chua, Scott Lee & Chang, Jessica & Riambau, Guillem, 2022. "Lying behavior when payoffs are shared with charity: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    24. Jiawei Li & Stephen Leider & Damian Beil & Izak Duenyas, 2021. "Running online experiments using web-conferencing software," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(2), pages 167-183, December.
    25. Daniel L. Chen & Martin Schonger & Chris Wickens, 2016. "oTree - An open-source platform for laboratory, online, and field experiments," Post-Print hal-04315125, HAL.
    26. Guth, Werner & Schmittberger, Rolf & Schwarze, Bernd, 1982. "An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 367-388, December.
    27. Chen, Daniel L. & Schonger, Martin & Wickens, Chris, 2016. "oTree—An open-source platform for laboratory, online, and field experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(C), pages 88-97.
    28. Zhi Li & Po-Hsuan Lin & Si-Yuan Kong & Dongwu Wang & John Duffy, 2021. "Conducting large, repeated, multi-game economic experiments using mobile platforms," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-18, April.
    29. Irene Maria Buso & Daniela Di Cagno & Lorenzo Ferrari & Vittorio Larocca & Luisa Lorè & Francesca Marazzi & Luca Panaccione & Lorenzo Spadoni, 2021. "Lab-like findings from online experiments," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(2), pages 184-193, December.
    30. John A. List, 2007. "On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(3), pages 482-493.
    31. Holm, Håkan & Nystedt, Paul, 2008. "Trust in surveys and games - A methodological contribution on the influence of money and location," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 522-542, August.
    32. Burdea, Valeria & Woon, Jonathan, 2022. "Online belief elicitation methods," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    33. Ben Gillen & Erik Snowberg & Leeat Yariv, 2019. "Experimenting with Measurement Error: Techniques with Applications to the Caltech Cohort Study," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(4), pages 1826-1863.
    34. Prissé, Benjamin & Jorrat, Diego, 2022. "Lab vs online experiments: No differences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    35. Wolff, Irenaeus, 2019. "The reliability of questionnaires in laboratory experiments: What can we do?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    36. Bonowski, Tim & Minnameier, Gerhard, 2022. "Morality and trust in impersonal relationships," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    37. Ayala Arad & Ariel Rubinstein, 2012. "The 11-20 Money Request Game: A Level-k Reasoning Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3561-3573, December.
    38. Daniel Zizzo, 2010. "Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(1), pages 75-98, March.
    39. Stahl, Dale II & Wilson, Paul W., 1994. "Experimental evidence on players' models of other players," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 309-327, December.
    40. Innes, Robert, 2022. "Does deception raise or lower lie aversion? Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    41. Shane Frederick, 2005. "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 25-42, Fall.
    42. Romano, Joseph P. & Wolf, Michael, 2016. "Efficient computation of adjusted p-values for resampling-based stepdown multiple testing," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 38-40.
    43. Nicholas Bardsley, 2008. "Dictator game giving: altruism or artefact?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(2), pages 122-133, June.
    44. Gneezy, Uri & Rockenbach, Bettina & Serra-Garcia, Marta, 2013. "Measuring lying aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 293-300.
    45. Shavit, Tal & Sonsino, Doron & Benzion, Uri, 2001. "A comparative study of lotteries-evaluation in class and on the Web," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 483-491, August.
    46. Erik Snowberg & Leeat Yariv, 2021. "Testing the Waters: Behavior across Participant Pools," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(2), pages 687-719, February.
    47. Katrin Schmelz & Anthony Ziegelmeyer, 2020. "Reactions to (the absence of) control and workplace arrangements: experimental evidence from the internet and the laboratory," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(4), pages 933-960, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guo, Yiting & Shachat, Jason & Walker, Matthew J. & Wei, Lijia, 2023. "On the generalizability of using mobile devices to conduct economic experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    2. Roggenkamp, Hauke C., 2024. "Revisiting ‘Growth and Inequality in Public Good Provision’—Reproducing and Generalizing Through Inconvenient Online Experimentation," OSF Preprints 6rn97, Center for Open Science.
    3. Johannes G. Jaspersen & Marc A. Ragin & Justin R. Sydnor, 2022. "Insurance demand experiments: Comparing crowdworking to the lab," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 89(4), pages 1077-1107, December.
    4. Qi, Tianxiao & Xu, Bin & Wu, Jinshan & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2022. "On the Stochasticity of Ultimatum Games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 227-254.
    5. Zachary Breig & Allan Hernández-Chanto & Declan Hunt, 2022. "Experimental Auctions with Securities," Discussion Papers Series 657, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    6. Emin Karagözoğlu & Ümit Barış Urhan, 2017. "The Effect of Stake Size in Experimental Bargaining and Distribution Games: A Survey," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 285-325, March.
    7. Thomas, Ranjeeta & Galizzi, Matteo M. & Moorhouse, Louisa & Nyamukapa, Constance & Hallett, Timothy B., 2024. "Do risk, time and prosocial preferences predict risky sexual behaviour of youths in a low-income, high-risk setting?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    8. Iñigo Hernandez-Arenaz & Nagore Iriberri, 2023. "Gender differences in alternating-offer bargaining: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(4), pages 879-914, September.
    9. Matteo M. Galizzi & Daniel Navarro-Martinez, 2019. "On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 976-1002, March.
    10. Hedegaard, Morten & Kerschbamer, Rudolf & Müller, Daniel & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2021. "Distributional preferences explain individual behavior across games and time," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 231-255.
    11. Llorente-Saguer, Aniol & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Szech, Nora, 2023. "Designing contests between heterogeneous contestants: An experimental study of tie-breaks and bid-caps in all-pay auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    12. Michele Garagnani, 2023. "The predictive power of risk elicitation tasks," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 165-192, October.
    13. Polonio, Luca & Coricelli, Giorgio, 2019. "Testing the level of consistency between choices and beliefs in games using eye-tracking," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 566-586.
    14. Kovacs, Roxanne & Dunaiski, Maurice & Galizzi, Matteo M. & Grimalda, Gianluca & Hortala-Vallve, Rafael & Murtin, Fabrice & Putterman, Louis, 2024. "The determinants of trust: findings from large, representative samples in six OECD countries," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 124608, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Llorente-Saguer, Aniol & Sheremeta, Roman & Szech, Nora, 2016. "Designing Contests Between Heterogeneous Contestants: An Experimental Study of Tie-Breaks and Bid-Caps in All-Pay Auctions," MPRA Paper 71202, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Johannes Buckenmaier, 2021. "Cognitive sophistication and deliberation times," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 558-592, June.
    17. Iriberri, Nagore & García-Pola, Bernardo, 2019. "Naivete and Sophistication in Initial and Repeated Play in Games," CEPR Discussion Papers 14088, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Pedro Rey Biel, 2005. "Equilibrium PLay and Best Response to (Stated) Beliefs in Constant Sum Games," Experimental 0506003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Paolo Crosetto & Antonio Filippin, 2013. "A Theoretical and Experimental Appraisal of Five Risk Elicitation Methods," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 547, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    20. Crosetto, P. & Filippin, A., 2017. "Safe options induce gender differences in risk attitudes," Working Papers 2017-05, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Experimental economics; Laboratory experiments; Smartphone applications;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:99:y:2023:i:c:s0167487023000673. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.