TY  - JOUR
A1  - Loessl, Victor von
A1  - Bühren, Christoph
A1  - Frank, Björn
A1  - Wetzel, Heike
A1  - Wiederhold, Elina
T1  - Would you lie about your mother’s birthday? A new online dishonesty experiment
T2  - Journal of behavioral and experimental economics
N2  - Highlights
• We present a novel alternative to the die-in-the-cup experiment.
• Participants’ payoffs depend on their reported mothers’ birthdays.
• We find that subjects lied to obtain real monetary payoffs.
• The extent of lying is small and insensitive to several design variations.
Abstract
We ask a representative sample of German household decision-makers to enter their mother's birthday, with potential payments depending on the month and the day they state. Thus, we create an incentive to lie. Compared to the die-under-the-cup experiment, our alternative has a lower probability that the income-maximizing outcome is true. Furthermore, it is better suited for online surveys and samples in which gambling is socially stigmatized. We conduct different variations of this game to crystalize design recommendations for researchers interested in our tool. Participants lied to receive higher payoffs, but only with real monetary incentives and only to a relatively small extent. Our results are largely insensitive to several design elements that we vary, such as the probability of being paid and the magnitude of the payoffs.
KW  - Dishonesty
KW  - Lying
KW  - Survey experiment
KW  - Die-under-the-cup alternative
Y1  - 2024
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/82972
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-829722
SN  - 2214-8043
VL  - 109
IS  - 102191
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
ER  -