IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05496799.html

Measuring social norms: direct and indirect methods and the role of financial incentives in reducing misreporting

Author

Listed:
  • Ann-Kristin Reitmann

    (CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Universität Passau [Passau], Leibniz Universität Hannover = Leibniz University Hannover)

  • Clotilde Mahé

    (VU - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam [Amsterdam], Amsterdam Institute for Global Health & Development [Amsterdam, The Netherlands])

  • Micheline Goedhuys

    (Maastricht University [Maastricht])

  • Eleonora Nillesen

    (Maastricht University [Maastricht])

Abstract

We test two common features of the opinion-matching method to elicit personal beliefs and perceived social norms regarding female labor force participation among a sample of young Tunisian men and women. Our survey experiment contains two orthogonal treatment arms. In the first treatment arm, respondents were randomly assigned to answer a direct question about their personal beliefs regarding women working outside the home and an indirect questioning technique that provides more cover for the respondent: the list experiment. We find significant discrepancies between the two, particularly among male respondents -suggesting either biased personal beliefs in the direct question or non-strategic misreporting in the list experiment. It follows that, depending on which method is deemed more credible and which gender sample is considered, the prevalence of pluralistic ignorance varies widely in our setting. For the second treatment arm, we provided half of our sample with a financial incentive when eliciting perceived social norms regarding the appropriateness of women working. We find that financial incentives are necessary for both men and women to distinguish their personal beliefs from their perception of what others believe.

Suggested Citation

  • Ann-Kristin Reitmann & Clotilde Mahé & Micheline Goedhuys & Eleonora Nillesen, 2026. "Measuring social norms: direct and indirect methods and the role of financial incentives in reducing misreporting," Post-Print hal-05496799, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05496799
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2026.107465
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05496799v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-05496799v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2026.107465?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bryn Rosenfeld & Kosuke Imai & Jacob N. Shapiro, 2016. "An Empirical Validation Study of Popular Survey Methodologies for Sensitive Questions," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(3), pages 783-802, July.
    2. Nillesen, Eleonora & Grimm, Michael & Goedhuys, Micheline & Reitmann, Ann-Kristin & Meysonnat, Aline, 2021. "On the malleability of gender attitudes: Evidence from implicit and explicit measures in Tunisia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    3. Kuhn, Patrick M. & Vivyan, Nick, 2022. "The Misreporting Trade-Off Between List Experiments and Direct Questions in Practice: Partition Validation Evidence from Two Countries," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 381-402, July.
    4. Boring, Anne & Delfgaauw, Josse, 2024. "Social desirability bias in attitudes towards sexism and DEI policies in the workplace," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 465-482.
    5. Erin L. Krupka & Roberto A. Weber, 2013. "Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 495-524, June.
    6. James Andreoni & B. Douglas Bernheim, 2009. "Social Image and the 50-50 Norm: A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of Audience Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(5), pages 1607-1636, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gary Bolton & Eugen Dimant & Ulrich Schmidt, 2018. "When a Nudge Backfires. Using Observation with Social and Economic Incentives to Promote Pro-Social Behavior," PPE Working Papers 0017, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    2. Nadine Chlaß & Peter G. Moffatt, 2017. "Giving in Dictator Games - Experimenter Demand Effect or Preference over the Rules of the Game?," Jena Economics Research Papers 2012-044, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    3. Aycinena, Diego & Bogliacino, Francesco & Kimbrough, Erik O., 2024. "Measuring norms: Assessing the threat of social desirability bias to the Bicchieri and Xiao elicitation method," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 225-239.
    4. Daniel Jones & Sera Linardi, 2014. "Wallflowers: Experimental Evidence of an Aversion to Standing Out," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1757-1771, July.
    5. De Geest, Lawrence R. & Kingsley, David C., 2021. "Norm enforcement with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 403-430.
    6. Björn Bartling & Vanessa Valero & Roberto A. Weber, 2018. "The causal effect of income on market social responsibility," ECON - Working Papers 299, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Aug 2024.
    7. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Robbett, Andrea, 2024. "Measuring socially appropriate social preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 517-532.
    8. Prasenjit Banerjee & Vegard Iversen & Sandip Mitra & Antonio Nicolò & Kunal Sen, 2018. "Politicians and Their Promises in an Uncertain World: Evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in India," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1806, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    9. McBride, Michael & Ridinger, Garret, 2021. "Beliefs also make social-norm preferences social," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 765-784.
    10. Riehm, Tobias & Fugger, Nicolas & Gillen, Philippe & Gretschko, Vitali & Werner, Peter, 2021. "Social norms and market behavior: Evidence from a large population sample," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-017, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    11. Karakostas, Alexandros & Kocher, Martin G. & Matzat, Dominik & Rau, Holger A. & Riewe, Gerhard, 2023. "The team allocator game: Allocation power in public goods games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 73-87.
    12. Werner, Peter, 2024. "On common evaluation standards and the acceptance of wage inequality," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 137-156.
    13. Bicchieri, Cristina & Dimant, Eugen & Gächter, Simon & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2022. "Social proximity and the erosion of norm compliance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 59-72.
    14. Luise Goerges & Tom Lane & Daniele Nosenzo & Silvia Sonderegger, 2023. "Equal before the (expressive power of) law?," Economics Working Papers 2023-12, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    15. Zachary Grossman, 2014. "Strategic Ignorance and the Robustness of Social Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(11), pages 2659-2665, November.
    16. Manja Gärtner & Anna Sandberg, 2017. "Is there an omission effect in prosocial behavior? A laboratory experiment on passive vs. active generosity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-21, March.
    17. Ghosh, Sanmitra & Goswami, Mridu Prabal & Sarkar, Shubhro, 2025. "Moral wiggle room in the dictator game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    18. Gächter, Simon & Gerhards, Leonie & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2017. "The importance of peers for compliance with norms of fair sharing," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 72-86.
    19. Howe, E. Lance & Murphy, James J. & Gerkey, Drew & Stoddard, Olga B. & West, Colin Thor, 2023. "Sharing, social norms, and social distance: Experimental evidence from Russia and Western Alaska," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 345-358.
    20. Christian Thoeni & Simon Gaechter, 2011. "Peer Effects and Social Preferences in Voluntary Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2011-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05496799. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.