 Goal attainability and performance: Evidence from Boston marathon qualifying standardsMariya Burdina, Scott Hiller () and Neil E. Metz Journal of Economic Psychology, 2017, vol. 58, issue C, 77-88 Abstract: In this paper we test if performance improves once goals become more attainable. Goal-setting literature suggests that workers respond to challenging but achievable goals with increased performance. Empirical evidence supports the notion of goals increasing performance; however the evidence on how attainability of goals affects performance is mixed. This paper tests whether efforts increase, improving performance as the goals become more attainable. We are employing a unique set of publicly available marathon data from 1970 to 2015 to directly analyze the effect of goal attainability on performance. With the probable goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon, we test if runners increase their effort, and consequently improve their performance if they enter a new age group and as a result have a more attainable goal. We find that runners who enter a new age group perform better than the runners whose qualifying time did not change. This effect is seen with runners in younger age groups, but not found in the results of runners in more advanced years. Keywords: Goal-setting; Performance; Effort (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:58:y:2017:i:c:p:77-88 DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2017.01.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier |
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