Competitive behavior, impact on others, and the number of competitors

Donald Vandegrift () and Kristen Duke

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2015, vol. 57, issue C, 37-44

Abstract: This paper investigates changes in competitive behavior that follow from changes in: (1) the impact of competitive behavior on others; and (2) the size of the competitive reference group. Using a 2 × 3 between-subjects design, we asked participants whether they would work more hours (i.e., “compete”) in return for an increase in pay, varying: (1) group size – small (n = 4) or large (n = 40); (2) whether there is impact on others or not; and (3) given impact on others, whether there is future interaction or not. We find that when competitive behavior has no impact on coworkers (i.e., the baseline), the size of the competitive reference group does not influence the level of competitive behavior. If we allow the competitive choice to reduce the earnings of coworkers: (1) the level of competitive behavior falls relative to the baseline; and (2) increases in the size of the competitive reference group increase the level of competitive behavior. The level of competitive behavior falls further when respondents also anticipate future interactions with the reference group.

Keywords: Competitive behavior; Number of competitors; Fairness in competition; Norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804315000506
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:57:y:2015:i:c:p:37-44

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2015.04.008

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().