Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Artefactual Field Experiment on Information from the Social Network: Implications for Immigration

University Of Texas At Dallas, Richardson TX

Investigators

Abstract

This award funds doctoral dissertation research that uses a series of field experiments to investigate the impact of information and social networks on the decision to immigrate. The coPI models the decision to immigrate as a decision under ambiguity. A potential immigrant must consider the effect of his decision on his future economic welfare. If this person stays in his home country, he faces some uncertainty about his future earnings. However, while he cannot be certain about his future income, he has information about the range of possibilities. If this person instead moves to another country, he faces not simple uncertainty but ambiguity about future earnings. Not only is his future income uncertain, he does not even know the range of possible outcomes or the likelihood of any specific outcome. This model of immigration predicts that people who choose to immigrate are less ambiguity averse than people who remain in their home country. The experimental design examines choices in ambiguous situations, information shared in the social network about the ambiguity, and responses to that information. Participants in the experiment include current and potential future immigrants. Participants are allowed to send (and receive) information about an ambiguous risk to (and from) members of their social networks. The research design compares the value for three different kinds of information that can be communicated along a social network: outcome information, descriptive information, and advice. The design allows the researcher to separate the effects of these different types of information and measure the perceived value of each. The first stage of the research includes recent immigrants to the US. These participants will make choices in ambigious gambles and will give information about their social networks. They are allowed (at a cost) to send information to potential immigrants in their home village about the experimental tasks. The researcher will then travel to Mexico to contact the people in the immigrants? social networks. These people will also be invited to participate in the experiment and will make choices over a similar group of gambles. The research design will allow for a measurement of the dollar value of the information this second group of participants received from the first group. This project yields new insights into how social networks serve as conduits for information that affects decisions under ambiguity. The project will also yield new insight into the behavioral factors that affect decisions to immigrate. Broader impacts include extensive involvement of undergraduates in the research and new insight into the forces that encourage or discourage immigration from Mexico to the United States.