Compete with others? No, thanks. With myself? Yes, please!

Coren L. Apicella, Elif Demiral and Johanna Mollerstrom

Economics Letters, 2020, vol. 187, issue C

Abstract: We study the willingness to compete against self and others in an experiment with over 650 participants, using a modified version of the Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) design. We show that introducing a possibility to self-compete, in addition to the standard other-competition option, increases the proportion of participants who compete by more than 60 percent, indicating that self-competition attracts many of those who would otherwise have stayed out of competitions altogether. This holds for both men and women. Moreover, men and women prefer self-competitions to other-competitions, especially when they have to select one of the two types of competitions. We also document that self-competitions are perceived as more controllable than other-competitions.

Keywords: Competitiveness; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:187:y:2020:i:c:s0165176519304434

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2019.108878

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