Open Access

Victor von Loessl, Christoph Bühren, Björn Frank, Heike Wetzel, Elina Wiederhold

• 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.