Experimental economics platform

The experimental economics platform developed by GAEL is used for teaching and research purposes. It is both a standard experimental economics platform, used to test theories, and a "field experiment" platform designed to be anchored in the real world. In its field-experiment version, it is mainly used in consumer research: the subjects recruited are "real people" (not students) and the tasks they have to perform are concrete (e.g. choosing and buying products).

The platform includes

• an experimental room (equipped with 36 PCs, 16 barcode scanners, 2 video projectors, an information screen for the experimentalist, etc.), a back office (management server and experimental control station), a payment gate and a product storage room;
• a mobile laboratory comprising 30 tablets, a wifi networking terminal and a portable server;
• a web interface for subject registration;
• a collaborative website for researchers;
• a server for data archiving.

Overview of platform activities

• Over the past four years, the platform has been used to conduct experiments as part of 9 research programs, and to meet three main objectives: observation of individual and collective behavior ; public policy and market design; and measuring customer value.
• A total of 145 sessions were organized, involving 2012 students or "real people".
• Recognizing the need for better organization of our work due to (i) our collective nature, which involves a diversity of professions and skills, and (ii) the growing number of experiments, we launched a quality initiative with the support of INRA's SAE2 department. For the time being, this approach has focused on two processes : management of collected data (drafting of a charter, a guide to good practice and a self-assessment tool) ; subject recruitment (website, mutual commitment charter, creation of a "subject" database declared to the CNIL).