Measuring the Acceptability of Experimental Research in Economics

This paper examines public acceptability of randomized experimental research in economics using a preregistered conjoint experiment with 1,471 U.S. respondents. Acceptability varies substantially across domains: health-promoting interventions rank highest, while covert political advertising falls below the scale midpoint. Participant vulnerability is the dominant design attribute, followed by country of implementation and funding source. We also ask who should set ethical standards for experimental research, finding that the public assigns greatest governance legitimacy to experiment participants, citizens, and scientists and least to elected representatives and lawyers. We complement these findings with a companion study of research-active economists (N = 461) across the same experimental scenarios. Economists rate experiments substantially higher overall, preserve the public’s acceptability hierarchy, and assign the highest governance legitimacy to scientists rather than experiment participants. Our findings have direct implications for IRB design, research communication, and the political economy of evidence-based policymaking.