Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/185059 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
Diskussionsbeitrag No. 1809
Publisher: 
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Department für Agrarökonomie und Rurale Entwicklung (DARE), Göttingen
Abstract: 
Increasing popularity of economic experiments for policy impact analysis has led to an ongoing debate about the suitability of students to substitute professionals as experimental subjects. To date, subject pool effects in agricultural and resource economics experiments have not been sufficiently studied. In order to identify differences and similarities between students and non-students, we carry out an experiment in the form of a multi-period business management game that is adapted to an agri-environmental context. We compare the compliance behaviour of German agricultural students and German farmers with regard to water protection rules and analyse their responses to two different green nudge interventions. The experimental results reveal that the direction of the response to the policy treatments is similar. Even unexpected behaviour could be reproduced by the student sample. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the treatment effects differed between the two samples. This implies that experimenters in the field of agricultural and resource economics could use the subject pool of students to analyse the direction of nudge policies. If predictions should be made about the magnitude effects, we suggest using a professional subject pool.
Subjects: 
subject pool effect
green nudges
policy impact analysis
compliance behaviour
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
967.14 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.