GFAR mobile experimental laboratory
Background
The Centre for Global Food & Resources has established an experimental economics laboratory that can be taken into the field. A major focus for this mobile lab is on decision-making in local contexts. Current foci for the project include farmers in rural areas, developing nation contexts and industry partners. The lab is also available for student use in Masters and PhD projects.
We are interested in collaborating with industry or government partners that require the insights that can be provided from laboratory experiments. If you are interested in running experiments or would like to find out more please contact us by following the links at the bottom of this page.
This project aims to:
- Compare and contrast choice outcomes between students and actual decision-makers’ something rarely done in the literature
- Provide useful information to those interested in complex decision-making (e.g. appropriate regulatory incentives for minimising fertiliser application decisions to areas in close proximity to valuable natural resource areas such as the Great Barrier Reef)
- Expand the capture of decisions beyond single contexts, to encapsulate choice or decision-making process differences across the globe
- Expand our current reliance on survey data collection to incorporate risk preference analysis, private and public transaction cost threshold analysis, institutional and/or stakeholder interaction mapping etc.
Lab materials
The lab consists of 15 networked tablets, together with a ‘mother’ control-tablet. The interaction is web-based, using the Python/Django programming language. Sessions can be run indoors or outside as needed.
Project partners
Collaborating institutions:
- University of Southern Queensland, Australia
- Central Queensland University, Australia
Funding:
The project (2017) is funded by the University of Adelaide Research Infrastructure Scheme Stream 1: New Equipment program
Contact
GFAR researchers involved in this project: