Faculty of Law, Economics and Humanities, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan.
Institute for Organizational Behavior Research, Recruit Management Solutions, Co. Ltd., Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
PLoS One. 2022 Apr 20;17(4):e0267251. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267251. eCollection 2022.
With the spread of online behavioral experiments, estimating the effects of experimental situations and sample heterogeneity is increasing in discussions of the generalizability of data. In this study, we examined how the experimental situations (laboratory/online) affected group cooperation and individual performances. The participants were Japanese university students, randomly assigned to laboratory or online experiments. For the group cooperation task, they were asked to perform the public goods game with or without punishment, but no effect of the experimental situation was found both for cooperative and punitive behaviors. For the individual tasks, participants were asked to perform tasks including a creative task and a dull task. We manipulated the presence or absence of an external incentive. As a result, there was no significant difference between the experimental situations with one exception: only in the laboratory situation was the performance of the difficult creative task lower in the presence of an external incentive. Furthermore, we conducted as an additional experiment using the same treatments for a Japanese online-worker sample. This sample was less cooperative in the public goods game than the student sample, both with and without punishment. In addition, the presence of external incentives facilitated performance of the online-worker sample only for the dull task. We discuss the similarities and differences with previous studies that examined the effects of experimental situations and sample heterogeneity, and the implications for remote work in the real world.
随着在线行为实验的传播，在讨论数据的可推广性时，越来越多地需要估计实验情境和样本异质性的影响。在这项研究中，我们考察了实验情境（实验室/在线）如何影响群体合作和个体表现。参与者是日本大学生，随机分配到实验室或在线实验中。在群体合作任务中，他们被要求在有或没有惩罚的情况下进行公共物品博弈，但无论是合作行为还是惩罚行为，实验情境都没有影响。对于个体任务，参与者被要求完成包括创造性任务和枯燥任务在内的任务。我们操纵了外部激励的存在与否。结果，除了一个例外，实验情境之间没有显著差异：只有在实验室情境中，存在外部激励时，困难的创造性任务的表现会降低。此外，我们还进行了一项额外的实验，使用相同的处理方法对日本在线工作者样本进行实验。这个样本在公共物品博弈中比学生样本的合作程度要低，无论是有惩罚还是没有惩罚。此外，外部激励的存在仅有助于在线工作者样本完成枯燥任务。我们讨论了与之前研究的相似之处和差异，这些研究考察了实验情境和样本异质性的影响，以及对现实世界远程工作的影响。
