I’ll be there: Promises in the field

Rong Rong and Jared Barton

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2021, vol. 166, issue C, 20-26

Abstract: As promises are non-binding, they can be either fulfilled or broken. Previous lab and field research mostly examines the factors that explain fulfillment, as promising itself is difficult to randomly assign. We design a novel natural field experiment where subtle changes of words in an invitation email shifts the level of promise making among our subjects to test the causal effect of promises. Promises are positively related to experimental attendance, and using the invitation treatment as an instrumental variable, we recover a positive but imprecisely measured causal impact of promise making on behavior.

Keywords: Promise making; Promise fulfillment; Field experiment; Personality; Commitment-based model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:166:y:2021:i:c:p:20-26

DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2019.03.004

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