When opportunities backfire: Alternatives reduce perseverance and success in task completion

Uri Gneezy, Vadim Nelidov, Theo Offerman and Jeroen van de Ven

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 208, issue C, 304-324

Abstract: We consider an agent who needs to finish one task under a time constraint. Would she benefit from having several alternatives of which she only needs to complete one, or is it better not to have options? We conjecture that agents will be worse off when having several options. In our experiment, the control group receives a single task to work on, while the treated group has two optional tasks to choose from. We find that having two alternatives negatively affects performance. Even when the additional task is substantially easier than the original one, having more options does not help. We discuss potential mechanisms and present evidence showing that many managers do not anticipate the negative effects.

Keywords: Task completion; Frustration; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D83 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:208:y:2023:i:c:p:304-324

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.02.015

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