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Social identity, taste bias and under provisioning of public goods

Last registered on January 14, 2020
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Social identity, taste bias and under provisioning of public goods
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0004047
Initial registration date
January 13, 2020

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 14, 2020, 11:58 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
India
Region
Bihar

Primary Investigator

Name
RITWIK BANERJEE
Affiliation
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Anujit Chakraborty
PI Affiliation
University of California, Davis
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Ashokankur Dutta
PI Affiliation
Shiv Nadar University
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Arka Roy Chaudhuri
PI Affiliation
ISI Delhi
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2020-03-01
End date
2020-05-14
Keywords
Governance, Other, Welfare
Additional Keywords
Public Goods, Taste Bias, Discrimination, Fractionalization
JEL code(s)
H4 H8 O1
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Data shows that public good provision in India decreases with an increase in caste based fractionalization. While past research documents this association, the causal interpretation and the deeper mechanisms driving the result is an open question. This project aims to plug this gap by identifying the precise causal connection between caste fractionalization in India and under provisioning of public goods using an artefactual field experiment. Further, it aims to examine if higher fractionalization leads to lower co-consumption of public good due to distaste for the social other. To give an example, suppose people from different castes need to coordinate to build a well or lobby with local authorities to build that well. In a more caste wise fractured village, people may be less likely to coordinate and build the well because they have a distaste for sharing the public good with outgroup members. This form of associative distaste is markedly different from free riding, the dominant theme examined in the context of public good provision. Participants from Upper Castes and Scheduled Castes play a public good game under three treatment and two compositional conditions. In Treatment 1 they play it with money, while in Treatment 2 and 3 they play the game with biriyani (a delightful self contained meal consumed in many parts of India). In Treatment 2 participants can carry the food back home while in Treatment 3 they co-consume the food at the venue. Each treatment is played with only Upper Caste, only Scheduled Caste and mixed participants. Our experimental design allows us to separate free riding and unwillingness to share owing to associative distaste as two plausible reasons behind underprovision of public goods, through lab-in-the-field experiments conducted in rural areas in the Indian state of Bihar.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
BANERJEE, RITWIK et al. 2020. "Social identity, taste bias and under provisioning of public goods." AEA RCT Registry. January 14. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4047-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

Sponsors

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2020-03-01
Intervention End Date
2020-05-14

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Contribution in the public good game.
Beliefs about how much others will contribute.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experiment will involve male participants in the age group of 18-35 years, selected from the sampled villages of Patna-Rural district of Bihar, India. Participants or subjects will be selected from Upper Caste and Scheduled Caste categories. Each session will consist of three to four groups of four individuals playing a simple public good game: every player will be given a fixed amount of money/goods and will be asked to contribute towards a common pool. The treatment variations are along two basic dimensions: the composition of the group and the nature of the good in terms of which the endowment and pay-offs are defined. We now discuss the two differentiating criteria in more details.
In homogenous sessions, all four subjects participating in the session will be from the same caste group, either Upper Caste (UC, henceforth) or Scheduled Caste (SC, henceforth). In heterogeneous sessions, two of the players will belong to the SC category, while the remaining two will be from UC category. The caste composition in each group will be common knowledge, though the game itself will be anonymously played.
A standard money based public good game cannot possibly invoke associative distaste since the act of sharing itself is absent. As a result, we introduce a variant of the public good game where subjects play with biriyani (a delightful self-contained meal with substantial aspiration value in India) instead of money. a substantial aspiration value in India. Thus, in our experiment there will be three kinds of goods in terms of which sessions will be differentiated.
Experimental Design Details
The following are the specific treatments planned:
1) Money sessions: subjects will get their endowments and payments in terms of money (INR). The following two subtreatments will allow us to pin down the structural parameters:
1.1 MPCR=0.4
1.2 MPCR=0.8
2) Meal-to-go sessions: subjects will be endowed in terms of biriyani. At the end of the game, the amount of biriyani in the (notional) public pot is distributed among the subjects and they take their shares back home.
3) Meal-to-share sessions: subjects will be endowed in terms of biriyani, like in the Meal-to-go treatment. At the end of the game, the amount biriyani in the common pot is divided among the subjects. Subjects sit down together to eat their share of cooked meal.
On the basis of these two criteria we plan to run the following treatments:

Nature of the good Composition of the Group
Homogenous Heterogenous
Money Treatment 1 Treatment 2
Meal-to-go Treatment 3 Treatment 4
Meal-to-share Treatment 5 Treatment 6
Treatment 1 and 2 will be played with MPCR=0.4 and 0.8. The homogenous treatment will be played with only Scheduled Caste and only Upper Caste participants. The heterogenous treatment will be played with a mixed group of Scheduled Caste and Upper Caste participants.
Randomization Method
Randomization will be done at the site of experiment by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Randomization will be done at the session level. Each session will be randomly assigned to one of the treatments.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
110 sessions, each with 16 subjects.
In our case, a session will assume the role of a cluster.
Sample size: planned number of observations
1800 subjects
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
7 sessions per treatment arm, with 16 subjects in each.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Research Ethics Committee, London School of Economics
IRB Approval Date
2019-12-17
IRB Approval Number
1034
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials