Arechar Antonio A, Gächter Simon, Molleman Lucas
1Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT USA.
2CeDEx, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD UK.
Exp Econ. 2018;21(1):99-131. doi: 10.1007/s10683-017-9527-2. Epub 2017 May 9.
Online labor markets provide new opportunities for behavioral research, but conducting economic experiments online raises important methodological challenges. This particularly holds for interactive designs. In this paper, we provide a methodological discussion of the similarities and differences between interactive experiments conducted in the laboratory and online. To this end, we conduct a repeated public goods experiment with and without punishment using samples from the laboratory and the online platform Amazon Mechanical Turk. We chose to replicate this experiment because it is long and logistically complex. It therefore provides a good case study for discussing the methodological and practical challenges of online interactive experimentation. We find that basic behavioral patterns of cooperation and punishment in the laboratory are replicable online. The most important challenge of online interactive experiments is participant dropout. We discuss measures for reducing dropout and show that, for our case study, dropouts are exogenous to the experiment. We conclude that data quality for interactive experiments via the Internet is adequate and reliable, making online interactive experimentation a potentially valuable complement to laboratory studies.
在线劳动力市场为行为研究提供了新机会，但在线进行经济实验引发了重要的方法学挑战。对于交互式设计而言尤其如此。在本文中，我们对在实验室和在线环境中进行的交互式实验的异同进行了方法学讨论。为此，我们使用来自实验室和在线平台亚马逊土耳其机器人的样本，进行了有惩罚和无惩罚的重复公共品实验。我们选择复制这个实验，是因为它耗时较长且在后勤方面很复杂。因此，它为讨论在线交互式实验的方法学和实际挑战提供了一个很好的案例研究。我们发现实验室中合作与惩罚的基本行为模式在网上是可复制的。在线交互式实验最重要的挑战是参与者退出。我们讨论了减少退出的措施，并表明，对于我们的案例研究来说，退出是外生于实验的。我们得出结论，通过互联网进行的交互式实验的数据质量是足够且可靠的，这使得在线交互式实验成为实验室研究潜在的有价值的补充。
