What if we could artificially manipulate the level of income inequality in a society and causally estimate its effects on political solidarities? This paper presents exploratory evidence from a pilot study of Novaland, an online state in which volunteers act and interact on a text-based platform. Thereby, the online behaviour of participants affects their actual financial pay-out. This novel research design builds on text adventures in pedagogy and gaming, on social psychological role-taking by experimental design, and on behavioural and survey instruments. The main causal effects analysed are whether absolute levels of and relative changes in income inequality affect political solidarities, that is, the individual willingness to support public redistribution in favour of other social groups. Theoretically, the paper concentrates on individual-level mechanisms from the Meltzer-Richards-Model and the Deservingness Literature.
The paper systematically presents the technical realisation of the pilot platform. In addition, it reviews measures of internal validity (do participants behave predictably and consistently within the experiment?). Finally, the paper puts forward assessments of external validity (do causal effects in the online world reflect actual causal effects outside?).
If the pilot study demonstrated promising signs of valid measurements, it would open up a completely new avenue for research on the link between macro-level characteristics of societies and states, such as income inequality, and micro-level social, economic and political behaviour, such as political solidarities.