Lottery Prize Preference Elicitation
RCTClinical Trial
Asking survey respondents hypothetically how relatives should spend income often yields non-binding, cheap-talk responses. Incentivized allocation choices are required to measure true underlying expenditure priorities without introducing social desirability bias.
Picture this
Instead of asking someone theoretically how family members should spend money, researchers offer a sweepstakes entry for a real $500 prize and ask the participant to divide that exact prize among specific expense buckets if won. Because real prize money is at stake, the participant reveals genuine spending priorities.
What the evidence says
The lottery allocation task elicited baseline spending priorities across food (26%), utility bills (25%), education (20%), and medical expenses (10%) while identifying target beneficiary households in the Philippines.
- Who was studied
- 4,458 recruited Filipino migrant workers in Dubai and Sharjah, UAE.
- How
- Experimental baseline preference elicitation protocol embedded in a baseline survey using a $500 lottery prize allocation task across expenditure categories (food, education, housing, medical, business).
What to do
Implement incentivized conditional prize choices in baseline surveys to establish objective benchmark priorities for intra-household allocation research.
From the source
"The question on the lottery prize also elicits the respondent's preferences regarding how the lottery prize should be used, with money amounts allocated across multiple possible categories (such as food, education, and housing)... 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