Describing Deferred Acceptance and Strategyproofness to Participants: Experimental Analysis

TL;DR

This study experimentally examines how well participants understand the Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism and its strategyproofness property, finding that effective communication improves understanding but does not guarantee grasp of strategic implications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel GUI and menu description method to enhance understanding of DA and strategyproofness, providing insights into effective communication of complex mechanisms.

Findings

Participants can learn DA mechanics with a GUI.

Understanding of strategyproofness remains limited despite learning mechanics.

Better descriptions improve comprehension of strategyproofness.

Abstract

We conduct an incentivized lab experiment to test participants' ability to understand the DA matching mechanism and the strategyproofness property, conveyed in different ways. We find that while many participants can (using a novel GUI) learn DA's mechanics and calculate its outcomes, such understanding does not imply understanding of strategyproofness (as measured by specially designed tests). However, a novel menu description of strategyproofness conveys this property significantly better than other treatments. While behavioral effects are small on average, participants with levels of strategyproofness understanding above a certain threshold play the classical dominant strategy at very high rates.