Incentivized Lab Game Behavioral Forecasting

In Simple Words

Before launching a new banking product, researchers test it using a game where participants make decisions with real cash prizes. Because actual money is on the line during the game, the choices participants make accurately reflect how they will behave when offered the real-world financial product later on.

Research question

Financial institutions struggle to accurately forecast consumer demand for novel financial commitment products prior to deployment. Standard stated-preference survey questions frequently suffer from hypothetical bias, overestimating actual real-world adoption.

Participants

N = 483 Filipino migrant workers in Rome evaluated for EduPay authorization form signing (out of N = 501 baseline participants; 73% female, 68% domestic workers).

Study Design

Probit regression modeling real-world product take-up (signing an authorization letter for EduPay) as a function of prior allocation choices made in a 1,000 € incentivized dictator game.

Results

Every 100 € allocated to direct payment in the game increased real-world EduPay take-up by 2.07 percentage points (p < 0.01; an 8.7 percentage point increase per 1 SD, representing a 32% increase relative to the 27.1% mean take-up rate).

Takeaway

Use real-stakes, incentivized experimental allocation games to test user demand and forecast adoption rates for new financial products before full commercial rollout.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Baseline

The starting measurements in a study. Researchers use these to compare what participants were like at the start with what happens later.

ExampleBefore a training programme starts, researchers measure workers’ earnings. That first measurement is the baseline.

GET-IT glossary · Baseline characteristics ↗Read more about baseline →

Percentage points

The difference between two percentages.

ExampleA rise from 40% to 50% is 10 percentage points. Relative to the starting value, that is a 25% increase.

Office for National Statistics · Percentages ↗Read more about percentage points →

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