 How are you? How's it going? What's up? What's happening? Nudging people to tell us how they really areFredrik Carlsson and Mitesh Kataria () No 649, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Abstract: We investigate a novel approach to reduce measurement error in subjective well-being (SWB) data. Using a between-subject design, half of the subjects are asked to promise to answer the survey questions truthfully in an attempt to make them commit to truth-telling. This allows us to experimentally test whether making a promise affects their responses. We find a statistically significant difference between mean stated well-being between the two groups (with and without a promise, although the effect sizes are rather small). We then investigate to what extent the differences in stated well-being also affect the inference from regressions models on the determinants of SWB. We find important differences in terms of size and statistical significance of the coefficients between the two models, despite the small effect sizes on the dependent stated well-being variable.
Keywords: measurement error; social desirability; subjective well-being; truth-telling (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0649 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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