Rommel, Jens
- Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
Abstract
Economic experiments are increasingly conducted with field populations for whom comprehension of instructions may be more difficult to achieve. We investigate how framing experimental instructions in a familiar context and incentivizing the experimental task may affect comprehension. Based on an experiment with 146 German farmers, we compare four different versions of a Holt-and-Laury multiple price list. We find that incentives have a small positive effect on comprehension, as measured by the probability of making inconsistent choices and subjects' self-assessment. In the absence of incentives, framing negatively affects comprehension. Comprehension is enhanced for farmers who score high on a numeracy test. We conclude that contextual framing might confuse subjects, whereas incentives can help to facilitate comprehension of experimental instructions.
Keywords
Comprehension in experiments; framing effects; Holt and Laury; incentive effects
Published in
Applied Economics Letters
2017, volume: 24, number: 9, pages: 627-634
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Business Administration
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2016.1217302
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/95686