Evaluating Experimental Designs for External Validity
An economist wants to study if public recognition increases charitable giving. Consider two potential experimental designs:
Design A (Laboratory): University students are recruited to a lab. Each is given $20 and the option to donate any amount to a well-known charity. In one condition, participants are told their name and donation amount will be announced to the small group of other participants at the end of the session. In the control condition, donations are anonymous.
Design B (Field): The economist partners with a local charity during its annual online fundraising campaign. A sample of real donors visiting the website are randomly assigned to one of two groups. In the first group, donors are told their name can be listed on a public 'Honor Roll' on the charity's website. The second group is a control and is not given this option. The economist compares the average donation size between the two groups.
Based on established critiques concerning the differences between behavior in controlled settings versus the real world, evaluate which of these two designs is likely to produce results that are more representative of actual human generosity. Justify your evaluation by comparing the two designs on at least three critical dimensions.
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CORE Econ
Introduction to Microeconomics Course
Related
Scrutiny in Economic Experiments
Artificiality of Experimental Tasks and Environments
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A key 2007 study examined why behavior in controlled economic experiments might not reflect real-world actions. Match each factor identified as a potential cause for this discrepancy with the scenario that best illustrates it.
Explaining Discrepancies Between Lab and Field Observations
In a university laboratory, an experiment finds that 80% of student participants, when given a $20 endowment, choose to give half of it to an anonymous peer. However, university records show that the average student donation to a campus-wide charity drive is less than $5 per year. Based on the central critiques of a prominent 2007 study on the external validity of lab experiments, which of the following provides the most comprehensive explanation for this discrepancy?
A central argument in critiques of laboratory-based economic experiments is that the artificiality and scrutiny of the lab environment systematically cause participants to behave more selfishly than they would in comparable real-world situations.
Evaluating Experimental Designs for External Validity