Subject Pools and Deception in Agricultural and Resource Economics Experiments

Timothy Cason and Steven Y. Wu ()
Additional contact information
Steven Y. Wu: Purdue University

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2019, vol. 73, issue 3, No 2, 743-758

Abstract: Abstract The use of student subjects and deception in experiments are two controversial issues that often raise concerns among editors and reviewers, which might prevent quality research from being published in agricultural and resource economics (ARE) journals. We provide a self-contained methodological discussion of these issues. We argue that field professionals are the most appropriate subjects for questions related to policy or measurement, and students are the most appropriate subjects for scientific research questions closely tied to economic theory. Active deception, where subjects are provided with explicitly misleading information, has been avoided in the mainstream economics discipline because it can lead to a loss of experimental control, lead to subject selection bias, and impose negative externalities on other researchers. Disciplinary ARE journals may want to abide by these norms against deception to maintain credibility. Interdisciplinary ARE journals may have more flexibility, although it is important to provide guidelines to avoid too much reviewer-specific variation in standards. For ARE researchers, we suggest employing a deception-free experimental design whenever possible because we know of no field in which deception is encouraged.

Keywords: Laboratory experiments; Field experiments; Methodology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 Q10 Q30 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-018-0289-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Subject Pools and Deception in Agricultural and Resource Economic Experiments (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:enreec:v:73:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10640-018-0289-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10640-018-0289-x

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().