Experienced vs. inexperienced participants in the lab: Do they behave differently?

Volker Benndorf, Claudia Moellers and Hans-Theo Normann

No 251, DICE Discussion Papers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)

Abstract: We analyze whether subjects with extensive laboratory experience and first-time participants, who voluntarily registered for the experiment, differ in their behavior. Subjects play four one-shot, two-player games: a trust game, a beauty contest, an ultimatum game, a travelers' dilemma and, in addition, we conduct a singleplayer lying task and elicit risk preferences. We find few significant differences. In the trust game, experienced subjects are less trustworthy and they also trust less. Furthermore, experienced subjects submit fewer non-monotonic strategies in the risk elicitation task. We find no differences whatsoever in the other decisions. Nevertheless, the minor differences observed between experienced and inexperienced subjects may be relevant because we document a potential recruitment bias: the share of inexperienced subjects may be lower in the early recruitment waves.

Keywords: dilemma; experienced subjects; laboratory methods; trust game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C72 C90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dcm, nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:dicedp:251

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