Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics最新文献

Rapid spread and erratic outbreaks of Rift Valley fever (RVF) disease across the African continent continues to pose serious threat to animal, public health, and regional livestock trade. Failure to institute timely control measures will have serious implications on food security and livelihoods. Among existing control options for the disease, vaccines are reported to be the most cost-effective. However, no RVF vaccines are currently registered for use in Uganda. Prior to approval, reservations exist concerning the uptake of vaccines by farmers as they have to weigh in several features and associated risks before acceptance. This study utilizes data from 444 livestock farming households in Uganda to elicit farmers’ preference heterogeneity and the influence of choice heuristics on their preferences for RVF vaccines. The empirical results reveal that two livestock farmer segments exist with respect to RVF vaccine preference. The single dose vaccine attribute is the most highly valued by farmers. Further, livestock farmers’ conditional perceptions and risk attitudes play a major role in vaccine choice decisions. The paper highlights the need for careful consideration of livestock farmers’ preference heterogeneities and intrinsic motivations such as risk attitudes and conditional perceptions when designing policy instruments for the promotion of RVF vaccination programmes.

We conducted a proof-of-concept analysis to demonstrate that government funding decisions can be studied within a lab experiment: We explore the effects of government funding levels, information level, and various participant characteristics on the demand for elective egg freezing (EEF) and in vitro fertilization (IVF), two types of fertility treatment, and determine price and income elasticities of demand within an incentive-compatible experiment.

We recruited 217 female participants without children aged 20–29 years. Participants were assigned to one of three between-subjects experimental treatments that varied income endowment and information provided. Additionally, the experiment consisted of 3 within-subjects conditions corresponding to different levels of government funding for IVF and EEF with 2 decision periods (‘planning period’ and ‘family-formation period’) and participants had to indicate their treatment choice aiming to achieve a live birth.

The demand for EEF and IVF were shown to be price-inelastic. We found that the increase in the price for EEF and IVF through restrictions in government funding significantly reduced demand for such treatments. However, demand did not significantly change with income level, suggesting a high value associated with fertility treatment.

Overall, our study shows that government funding decisions for medical interventions can be explored within an experimental setting.

We present experimental evidence on bidding in second-price auctions with real objects. Our novel design, combining a second-price auction with an individual-specific binary-choice task based on the outcome of the auction, allows us to directly identify over- and under-bidding. We analyze bidding in real-object and induced-value auctions, and find significant deviations from truthful bidding in both. Overall, under-bidding is somewhat more prevalent than over-bidding; yet, the latter has a bigger magnitude, especially with induced values. At the individual level, however, we find that participants who over-bid in induced-value auctions are equally likely to over- or under-bid in real-object ones; moreover, there is no association in the size of the deviations from truthful bidding across the two types of auctions. Hence, we conclude that there is no relation between the tendency to deviate from truthful bidding in induced-value vs. real-object auctions.

Informed health insurance choices are important since they have significant health and financial consequences. Personalized information has been found to improve health insurance decision quality, and ensuring that it benefits vulnerable groups is essential. This study uses experimental data and random forests, to investigate heterogeneous treatment effects of optional personalized information for health insurance decision-support. During the experiment, participants with lower levels of Health Insurance Literacy and less accumulated wealth were less likely to access personalized information when multiple sources were available. Simultaneously, these participants were also found to benefit the most from personalized information, especially when presented using a graphical format, reducing their expected costs significantly. These results hold important implications for policy and practice. Integration of graphical elements into health insurance choice environments, can help individuals make better-informed choices. Additionally, concerted efforts should be made to ensure vulnerable groups have access to the information and support they need.

The reliance on student samples has long been a subject of debate in experimental approaches to studying behaviour. We contribute to this discussion by looking at differences in financial behaviour between a student and a non-student sample in three sets of lab experiments conducted in Spain, Germany and Poland (n=857). Participants from both samples switched more often and made better financial decisions after they received a message encouraging them to switch financial service providers. While the size of the effect on switching frequency was comparable between the two samples, the effect on switching quality was significantly stronger on non-students. Further analysis suggests this is due to a better performance of students before the prompt leaving less room for improvement by the reminder. Results suggest that experimental evidence derived from students should be generalized with caution.

Participants (n = 644) reported giving more durable gifts to committed relationship partners than to new relationship partners (even when controlling for the cost of the gifts). Study 1 focused on friendship; Study 2 focused on romantic relationships. In both studies, participants wrote autobiographical narratives and completed questionnaires about gift exchange. The present research extends previous work on inefficiency in gift exchange.

Is the phenomenon of people overestimating their skill relative to their peers (overplacement) exacerbated by group affiliation? Social identity theory predicts people evaluate in-group members more positively than out-group members, and we hypothesized that this differential treatment may result in greater overplacement when interacting with an out-group member. We tested this hypothesis with 301 US voters affiliated with either the Republican or Democratic party in the run-up to the 2020 Presidential election, a time when political identities were salient and highly polarized. We found there is a higher tendency for overplacement when faced with an out-group opponent than with an in-group opponent. Decomposition analysis suggests this difference is due to underestimating the opponent, as opposed to overestimating one’s own performance to a higher degree. Moreover, any tendency to incur in overplacement is mitigated when faced with an opponent with the same political identity relative to one with a neutral one. Group affiliation biases initial priors, but not how they are updated.

The vast literature dealing with the endowment effect (EE) revolves around untangling the various determinants that may be at work in producing the effect itself. We examine two of these likely determinants that remain under-researched: The first is the effect that the length of possession may have on the EE. The second is the type of good (tangible, intangible or exchange goods) used to test the effect. Using an online questionnaire experiment, we investigate these aspects using three different items – a mug, an Amazon gift card, and a quarterly subscription to Spotify – testing whether the EE occurs when subjects imagine owning the item for different lengths of time. We find that the EE appears clearly for all types of goods, while the results are less clear when considering the duration of possession.

International efforts to mitigate climate change are lagging behind. We study in an experiment a stylized climate club along the line of Nordhaus’s proposal to assess the behavioral effects on cooperation and surplus. We also evaluate in isolation the effects of different elements of the club design. Overall, a climate club increases cooperation but not surplus, with respect to voluntary cooperation in a baseline public good game.