Lottery Prize Allocation for Preference Elicitation
RCTClinical Trial
Eliciting unstated household expenditure priorities from migrant workers without triggering defensive responses or social desirability bias regarding family dynamics is difficult in field surveys.
Picture this
Asking migrants how they would divide a hypothetical cash prize among family needs reveals their true priority list for spending, similar to asking someone how they would allocate an unexpected store gift card.
What the evidence says
Food expenses (26%), utility bills (25%), and education expenses (20%) were the most frequently designated expenditure priorities, followed by medical expenses (10%), rent payment (6%), mortgage payment (5%), and business expenses (5%).
- Who was studied
- N = 8,248 Filipino migrant workers initially recruited in Dubai and Sharjah, UAE.
- How
- Baseline RCT questionnaire module asking participants to name a target household recipient for a hypothetical $500 USD lottery prize and allocate the money across spending categories.
What to do
Elicit true financial preferences in migrant worker surveys by framing expenditure priorities around the hypothetical distribution of a cash lottery prize.
From the source
"To identify which corresponding household in the Philippines we should interview, the migrant participants were asked to name (and provide contact information for) an individual in the Philippines who would be the recipient of a US$500 lottery prize... A respondent's choice of lottery prize allocation is regarded as a proxy for the respondent's perceived priority of household expenditure."
A Field Experiment among Filipino Migrant Workers in the UAE.pdf