Pedaling peers: The effect of targets on performance

Markus Baldauf and Joshua Mollner

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2019, vol. 167, issue C, 90-103

Abstract: Individuals facing competitive targets increase their effort but respond non-monotonically to the target’s difficulty. We use a novel dataset of informal amateur cycling competitions to track the responses of individuals to competitively-set targets (in the form of displacement from the top of a leaderboard). Modeling the choice problem of these individuals, we derive a set of testable hypotheses. We find, as predicted by the model, that individuals compete sooner and more intensely after displacement. As our main result, we find an inverted-U relationship between the increase in effort and the size of the displacement.

Keywords: Rank incentives; Targets; Peer competition; Effort choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J22 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:167:y:2019:i:c:p:90-103

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2019.09.018

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