Pessimism and Overcommitment: An Online Experiment with Tempting YouTube Content

Claes Ek and Margaret Samahita

No 202203, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: This paper explores the possibility that demand for costly commitment may prove unnecessary and thus excessive. In an online experiment, subjects face a tedious productivity task where tempting YouTube videos invite procrastination. Subjects can pay for a commitment device that removes the videos with some probability less than one, allowing us to compare their willingness to pay with realized material and psychological costs of temptation. A significant share of subjects overestimate their commitment demand, being overly pessimistic about their performance when tempted. However, the total realized ex-post disutility from undercommitment is greater than that from overcommitment.

Keywords: Commitment devices; Pessimism; Self-control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2022-01
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