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

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