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JUST VENMO ME: Does form of payment affect risk taking and intertemporal choice?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Jessica B. Hoel ,
Prachi Jain  and
Bridget Galaty
Jessica B. Hoel*
Affiliation:
Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Prachi Jain
Affiliation:
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Bridget Galaty
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
*
e-mail: jhoel@coloradocollege.edu
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Abstract

We use an experiment to examine whether form of payment (cash or mobile money) affects estimates of intertemporal choice and risk taking. We find that form of payment does not affect temporal discounting and risk taking. Given that participants prefer payment via mobile money, the results suggest that there are minimal concerns with using mobile money to pay participants in experimental studies.

Keywords

Risk takingTemporal discountingMobile moneyForm of payment

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior
Type
Original Paper
Information
Journal of the Economic Science Association , Volume 8 , Issue 1-2 , December 2022 , pp. 16 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Economic Science Association 2022

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Footnotes

We would first like to thank our respondents, without whom this research would not have been possible. This project was first conceived as a group project with 12 students in the Fall 2018 course entitled “Experimental and Behavioral Economics: Time and Uncertainty." One student is a co-author, and we are indebted to our other class colleagues: Taylor Bigony, Anna Brent, Lilly Chen, Rae Conlon, Annie Engen, Jack Gu, Jackson Lovejoy, Matthew Maciag, Chris Maurice, Jacob Miller, and Brooke Veale. We appreciate feedback from Keith M Marzilli Ericson, Michael Kuhn, Karen Levy, Christina Rader, and seminar audiences at Colorado College, LACBEE, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the Colorado Economics Workshop, and Jain’s ESA mentoring group. We appreciate data assistance from Kevin Rask. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Colorado College SEGway fund, the Colorado College Social Science Executive Committee, the Colorado College Bruni fund, and the Colorado College Chapman and Souchek research funds. The replication materials for the study are available at https://doi.org/10.3886/E171061V1.

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