Who is coming to the artefactual field experiment? Participation bias among Chinese rural migrants

•We compare participants in an artefactual field experiment in urban China with the survey population of migrants from which they were recruited.•The experimental participants were more educated, more likely to lend money to friends, and worked fewer hours than the general population.•Our findings s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of economic behavior & organization 2015-06, Vol.114, p.62-74
Main Authors: Frijters, Paul, Kong, Tao Sherry, Liu, Elaine M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artefactual field experiment
Bias
China
Comparative studies
Economic behaviour
Marital status
Participation Bias
Regression analysis
Rural Migrants
Rural urban migration
Self employment
Small and medium sized enterprises
Social policy
Social psychology
Status
Wealth
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•We compare participants in an artefactual field experiment in urban China with the survey population of migrants from which they were recruited.•The experimental participants were more educated, more likely to lend money to friends, and worked fewer hours than the general population.•Our findings suggest that there was selection into our experiments on the basis of both observable characteristics and unobserved differences in behavioral relations. In this paper, we compare participants in an artefactual field experiment in urban China with the survey population of migrants from which they were recruited. The experimental participants were more educated, more likely to lend money to friends, and worked fewer hours than the general population. They differ significantly from non-participants in terms of regression coefficients, such as the effects of wealth and marital status on the probability of being self-employed and distance migrated. We thus find that there was selection into our experiments on the basis of both observable characteristics and on unobserved differences in behavioral relations.
ISSN:0167-2681
1879-1751
DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2015.03.006