Competitive Preferences and Status as an Incentive: Experimental Evidence

Gary Charness, David Masclet () and Marie Claire Villeval

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate individuals' investment in status in an environment where no monetary return can possibly be derived from reaching a better relative position. We use a real-effort experiment in which we permit individuals to learn and potentially improve their status (rank). We find that people express both intrinsic motivation and a taste for status. Indeed, people increase their effort when they are simply informed about their relative performance, and people pay both to sabotage others' output and to artificially increase their own relative performance. In addition, stronger group identity favors positive rivalry and discourages sabotage among peers.

Keywords: Status seeking; rank; competitive preferences; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00497974v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Published in 2010

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00497974v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Competitive Preferences and Status as an Incentive: Experimental Evidence (2011)
Working Paper: Competitive Preferences and Status as an Incentive: Experimental Evidence (2010)
Working Paper: Competitive preferences and status as an incentive: experimental evidence (2010)
Working Paper: Competitive preferences and status as an incentive: experimental evidence (2010)
Working Paper: Competitive Preferences and Status as an Incentive: Experimental Evidence (2010)
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:hal:journl:halshs-00497974

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().