Do People Behave in Experiments as in the Field? � Evidence from Donations

Matthias Benz and Stephan Meier

No 248, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Laboratory experiments are an important methodology in economics, especially in the field of behavioral economics. However, it is still debated to what extent results from laboratory experiments can be applied to field settings. One highly important question with respect to the external validity of experiments is whether the same individuals act in experiments as they would in the field. This paper presents evidence on how individuals behave in donation experiments and how the same individuals behave in a naturally occurring decision situation on charitable giving. The results show that behavior in experiments is correlated with behavior in the field. The results are robust to variations in the experimental setting, and the correlation between experimental and field behavior is between 0.25 and 0.4. We discuss whether this correlation should be interpreted as strong or weak and what consequences the findings have for experimental economics.

Keywords: Experiments; external validity; methodology; charitable giving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D01 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52217/1/iewwp248.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zur:iewwpx:248

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Severin Oswald ().