The effect of gender and parenting daughters on judgments of morally controversial companies

Paweł Niszczota; Michał Białek

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0260503

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 8, 2021
3 Sep 2021 Decision Letter - Joanna Tyrowicz, Editor PONE-D-21-22149 The effect of gender and parenting daughters on judgments of morally controversial companies PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Niszczota, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. I have now heard from one referee, several others whom I contacted where unable to provide a review. After my own reading of the paper and having heard from this one referee, who is giant in the field, I decided to invite you to revise and resubmit your paper. I agree with the issues raised by the referee and in my judgment, you should be able to constructively address all of them. Please, make sure that your revision meets PLOS ONE’s publication criteria. Given that you run an experiment, please make sure that the content of your paper provides the reader with all the information necessary for them to judge the integrity of your research on their own. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 18 2021 11:59PM. 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Please ensure that you refer to Table A.1, A.2, A.3, A.4, A.5 and A.6 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? 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Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PLOS_2021.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260503.r001
Revision 1
19 Oct 2021 Author Response Specific Comments 1. My first problem reading the paper is that it omits some important information that would be useful to report when presenting the results. For example, the results from the regressions do not show the list of controls that are included and more so the coefficients of these variables. These would be useful as they would give a reader a better sense of the properties of the sample. Similarly, I did not find good evidence on the definition of controversial sectors. Perhaps this has been reported in the past study, but I think it would be necessary to bring up some of these materials to the current draft as well. RESPONSE We’d like to thank the Reviewer for these suggestions. Our tables were indeed unorthodox, in that they did not list which control variables were used, and what were their estimates. We have amended this: now all our tables (including the supplementary tables) include estimates for all control variables. We now also mention in the text which controversial and conventional stocks we used, additionally pointing the reader to descriptions (in the Appendix). This should have been indicated in the earlier version of the paper – we appreciate that the Reviewer has pointed out this issue, as it enhances the readability of the manuscript. 2. Like the authors, I am also worried a bit about the Rabin effect, that is, whether intent to do something is equivalent to the act of doing it itself. Is there some evidence that the authors could bring up that this distinction is gender or gender/offspring indifferent? I think this would be a partial way to address the concern whether one can interpret the results as economically meaningful. RESPONSE This is an excellent observation. Indeed, the differences that we observed could potentially be the result of gender differences in hypothetical bias, i.e. the difference between the intent to act and actual action. However, there is no consistent evidence on whether this bias is different between men and women (Johansson-Stenman & Svedsäter, 2012): significant differences, if present, mostly show that the hypothetical bias is actually lower in women. This would suggest that women – relative to men – state preferences that are not that far away from real-life (revealed) preferences (in our case: a preference of not investing in morally controversial companies, and not wanting to be employed by them). (We are unaware of any studies that would investigate how the gender of children might impact hypothetical bias.) We address this issue in the Discussion. 3. It would be helpful to clarify that the results from both experiments are extensive margin results, which do not allow for the possibility of the variation in intensity of action. This is particularly true for investment decisions. In some sense, the experiments assume the strict exclusionary screening on its participants. RESPONSE Another fine point. Indeed, we designed both studies with the intention of studying extensive margins. We now confirm that this is the case in the Introduction. We also point out that we assumed that participants would be able to treat our task as one that relates to extensive margins, and not intensive margins (the latter could be especially relevant if they actually invested or were employed in companies from the listed industries). Participants were assumed to be robust to such cases, indeed being able to correctly infer that we were after the extensive margin. We now notice in the Discussion that this is an important distinction, and that studying intensive margins results could potentially lead to different results. 4. It would be useful to provide some discussion of the economic magnitudes. Can you link your results to some form of aggregates? When you discuss issues like gender gap, how should we think of these ideas in the context of the fraction of jobs that are available in the controversial industries, average pay in these jobs, etc? RESPONSE This is a very useful comment. It is important to point out to the reader that this is actually a salient issue, given that the proportion of companies that could be considered as morally controversial is considerable. We provide a (reasonable, in our view) lower and upper bound for the part of companies that could be considered ‘sinful’ in some way. Firstly, we point to data from Trinks and Scholtens (2017), who estimate that companies dealing with the fourteen controversial issues they study constitute 10% of the number of S&P 500 stocks, and 12% of the market capitalization of companies from that index. But this is just a lower bound, given the growing number of issues that could contribute to the company being treated as ‘sinful’. Secondly, we point the reader to a US survey consisting of over 14,500 employees, in which 23% of them indicated that (Ivcevic et al., 2020). Lastly, we suggest that ESG ratings could be used as proxies for being sinful (e.g., if a company is classified as a ‘laggard’ by MSCI). We also provide estimates for the premium resulting from working for morally controversial companies, that are provided Schneider et al. (2020). In that study, it was estimated that tobacco companies pay a 35% higher wage than neutral (conventional) companies. Given that tobacco companies are (probably) one of the most controversial ones, this (probably) serves as an upper bound for the effect (which we acknowledge in the text). This should be a useful proxy for the reader, nonetheless. 5. In the discussion section, the authors argue that their results suggest that men might internalize the preferences of their daughters. I find this result quite surprising. Does this mean the daughters are already grown-up individuals? If so, it would be useful to bring up some evidence on the demographics of these daughters/sons. My interpretation would be that having a daughter may carry a different emotional load and men may want to cater to this social norm pressure. Can the authors rule out such explanation? What is the basis for such inference? RESPONSE This is a great observation, something that indeed requires clearing up. We assume that the Reviewer is referring to the following, indeed misleading sentence from our discussion: “This effect suggests that men might internalize the preferences of their daughters, making their judgments and behaviors more in line with those manifested by women”. In truth, we actually believe in the interpretation provided by the Reviewer, that being a parent to a daughter causes parents to behave differently (due to, e.g., expected or actual social pressures). It should not require parents to observe the behavior of their own child, and instead be the result of a quick adaptation to the reality of being a parent to a daughter. Pogrebna et al. (2018) provide some evidence that this is the case, using data from future parents who have just found out about the sex of their not-yet-born child. Our own results (reported in Table S4) are also generally consistent with this interpretation, suggesting that for the daughter effect to work, it does not require years of socialization (parents “growing up” with their children). We have now amended the Introduction, to make clear that this is our (and the Reviewer’s) assumption concerning the mechanism behind potential daughter effects. --- Overall, we are indebted to the Reviewer for finding the time to review our manuscript. This is kind. The comments are insightful, and have led to revisions that the readers will benefit from. We’d also like to take the opportunity to thank the Reviewer for the pioneering work that has inspired not only this paper, but a whole research project that we are involved in. Thank you! References Ivcevic, Z., Menges, J. I., & Miller, A. (2020, March 20). How Common Is Unethical Behavior in U.S. Organizations? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/03/how-common-is-unethical-behavior-in-u-s-organizations Johansson-Stenman, O., & Svedsäter, H. (2012). Self-image and valuation of moral goods: Stated versus actual willingness to pay. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 84(3), 879–891. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2012.10.006 Pogrebna, G., Oswald, A. J., & Haig, D. (2018). Female babies and risk-aversion: Causal evidence from hospital wards. Journal of Health Economics, 58, 10–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.12.006 Schneider, F., Brun, F., & Weber, R. A. (2020). Sorting and Wage Premiums in Immoral Work (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3646150). Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3646150 Trinks, P. J., & Scholtens, B. (2017). The Opportunity Cost of Negative Screening in Socially Responsible Investing. Journal of Business Ethics, 140(2), 193–208. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2684-3 Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260503.r002
11 Nov 2021 Decision Letter - Joanna Tyrowicz, Editor The effect of gender and parenting daughters on judgments of morally controversial companies PONE-D-21-22149R1 Dear Dr. Niszczota, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Joanna Tyrowicz Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The authors have successfully addressed all my questions and I have no further comments on the manuscript. I suggest that the paper be accepted for publication. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes:** Marcin Kacperczyk https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260503.r003
Formally Accepted
18 Nov 2021 Acceptance Letter - Joanna Tyrowicz, Editor PONE-D-21-22149R1 The effect of gender and parenting daughters on judgments of morally controversial companies Dear Dr. Niszczota: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Joanna Tyrowicz Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260503.r004

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