Strength is Still a Weakness: Two Replications of the Strength-is-Weakness Effect in Coalition Formation Using the oTree Landowner Game in the Lab and on Amazon Mechanical Turk

A key observation in coalition formation research is the finding that bargainers with many resources are seemingly paradoxically often excluded from coalitions; an observation dubbed the Strength-is-Weakness effect. Whereas this effect has been observed in multiple research paradigms, studies have generally suffered from relatively low sample size. In the current paper we present two preregistered and incentivized replications using the novel oTree landowner game: one replication in a standard psychology lab setting and one using Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). Results from both studies show a clear replication of the Strength-is-Weakness effect. Moreover, despite methodological differences, results from both studies are highly similar. Although the AMT study suffered from more participant attrition than the lab study, we demonstrate that the oTree landowner game is a viable tool for conducting interactive coalition formation research online using a large sample.