J. Lucas Reddinger

Research

“Temptation: Immediacy and certainty”

• Under review.
• Paper revised 8 December 2022.
• Online appendix: Experimental interface.
• Experiment demonstration.

Is an option especially tempting when it is both immediate and certain? To study the effect of risk on present bias, I conduct an online experiment in which workers allocate about thirty minutes of real-effort tasks between two weeks. I compare choices made two days before the first workday against choices made when work is imminent. In baseline treatments, one choice is randomly implemented; meanwhile, one treatment implements a particular allocation with certainty. By assuming that effort costs are not affected by the mechanism (and thus independent of risk preferences), my novel design permits estimation of present bias using a decision with a consequence both immediate and certain. I find the average intensity of present bias is far greater under certainty than under risk. I find no evidence that present bias is more pervasive among individuals, suggesting instead that present-biased individuals become more myopic.

“Vaccination as personal public good provision”

• With Gary Charness and David I. Levine.
• Under review. Revised 12 April 2024: Medrxiv; Socarxiv; OSF; local copy.
• Online appendix, revised 12 April 2024: OSF; local copy.
• Replication package: OSF.

Vaccination against infectious diseases has both private and public benefits. We study whether social preferences—concerns for the well-being of other people—are associated with one's decision regarding vaccination. We measure these social preferences for 549 online subjects with a public-good game and an altruism game. To the extent that one gets vaccinated out of concern for the health of others, contribution in the public-good game is analogous to an individual's decision to obtain vaccination, while our altruism game provides a different measure of altruism, equity, and efficiency concerns. We proxy vaccine demand with how quickly a representative individual voluntarily took the initial vaccination for COVID-19 (after the vaccine was widely available). We collect COVID-19 vaccination history separately from the games to avoid experimenter-demand effects. We find a strong result: Contribution in the public-good game is associated with greater demand to voluntarily receive a first dose, and thus also to vaccinate earlier. Compared to a subject who contributes nothing, one who contributes the maximum ($4) is 58% more likely to obtain a first dose voluntarily in the four-month period that we study (April through August 2021). In short, people who are more pro-social are more likely to take a voluntary COVID-19 vaccination. Behavior in our altruism game does not predict vaccination. We recommend further research on the use of pro-social preferences to help motivate individuals to vaccinate for other transmissible diseases, such as the flu and HPV.

“Can theories of social identity help increase uptake of a COVID-19 vaccine? A randomized trial”

• With David I. Levine and Gary Charness.
• Preventive Medicine Reports, October 2022.
• Author-formatted manuscript, dated 28 July 2022.

Widespread vaccination is certainly a critical element in successfully fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. We apply theories of social identity to design targeted messaging to reduce vaccine hesitancy among groups with low vaccine uptake, such as African Americans and political conservatives. We conducted an online experiment from April 7 to 27, 2021, that oversampled Black, Latinx, conservative, and religious U.S. residents. We first solicited the vaccination status of over 10,000 individuals. Of the 4,609 individuals who reported being unvaccinated, 4,190 enrolled in our covariate-adaptive randomized trial. We provided participants messages that presented the health risks of COVID-19 to oneself and others; they also received messages about the benefits of a COVID-19 vaccine and an endorsement by a celebrity. Messages were randomly tailored to each participant’s identities—Black, Latinx, conservative, religious, or being a parent. Respondents reported their intent to obtain the vaccine for oneself and, if a parent, for one’s child. We report results for the 2,621 unvaccinated respondents who passed an incentivized manipulation check. We find no support for the hypothesis that customized messages or endorsers reduce vaccine hesitancy among our segments. A post hoc analysis finds evidence that a vaccine endorsement from Dr. Fauci reduces stated intent to vaccinate among conservatives. We find no evidence that tailoring public-health communication regarding COVID-19 vaccination for broad demographic groups would increase its effectiveness. We recommend further research on communicators and endorsers, as well as incentives.

“Wage Policies, Incentive Schemes, and Motivation”

• With Gary Charness and Michael Cooper
• Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics, 2020; local copy.

We review experimental and field evidence of how effort and performance in the labor market is affected by financial incentives and non-monetary motivators. Especially small incentives may crowd-out intrinsic motivation, while large incentives may cause choking. A wide variety of social preferences affect labor supply, including gift exchange, fairness, and reciprocity.

Research in progress

“Measures of risk and ambiguity aversion”

With Kenneth Chan and Gary Charness. – Trial completed.

“Relationship investment”

With David Gill and Victoria Prowse. – Pre-registration stage.

“Simple tests of the resource model of self-control”

Pre-registration stage.

“Discouragement in the rational attention model”

Pre-registration stage.

About me

I was born and raised in Wyoming and Montana. Some of my favorite places include the Beartooth and Bighorn Mountains, and the entire Absaroka region—all in the vicinity of Yellowstone National Park, which my family simply called “the park.” I studied philosophy, economics, and mathematics as an undergraduate at Montana State University in Bozeman.

I independently learned about web engineering (various programming languages, database systems, and operating systems) in my younger years. I took a challenging and rewarding web development contract with a start-up after my undergraduate program. Once I completed my Master’s degree in economics at Montana State University in Bozeman, I worked full-time as a professional software engineer. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to return to academia and obtain my Ph.D. in economics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where my favorite pastime was reading economics articles at the beach.

Beyond the requisite hiking and backpacking, I enjoy bouldering, running, and skiing when the opportunity affords. I indent code with four spaces in Vim; I grew up on (and still use) OpenBSD and FreeBSD.