Incentives, Search Engines, and the Elicitation of Subjective Beliefs: Evidence from Representative Online Survey Experiments

Elisabeth Grewenig, Katharina Werner, Ludger Woessmann and Philipp Lergetporer

No 12217, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: A large literature studies subjective beliefs about economic facts using unincentivized survey questions. We devise randomized experiments in a representative online survey to investigate whether incentivizing belief accuracy affects stated beliefs about average earnings by professional degree and average public school spending. Incentive provision does not impact earnings beliefs, but improves school-spending beliefs. Response patterns suggest that the latter effect likely reflects increased online-search activity. Consistently, an experiment that just encourages search-engine usage produces very similar results. Another experiment provides no evidence of experimenter-demand effects. Overall, results suggest that incentive provision does not reduce bias in our survey-based belief measures.

Keywords: online search; incentives; beliefs; survey experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 C90 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-ict and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published in: Journal of Econometrics, 2022, 231 (1), 304-326

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Related works:
Journal Article: Incentives, search engines, and the elicitation of subjective beliefs: Evidence from representative online survey experiments (2022)
Working Paper: Incentives, search engines, and the elicitation of subjective beliefs: evidence from representative online survey experiments (2019)
Working Paper: Incentives, Search Engines, and the Elicitation of Subjective Beliefs: Evidence From Representative Online Survey Experiments (2019)
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