Incentives to lose revisited: The NHL and its tournament incentives

Helena Fornwagner

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2019, vol. 75, issue PB

Abstract: This paper analyzes data from a tournament, namely the National Hockey League regular scheduled season of games, which provides incentives to increase effort in order to reach the playoffs and incentives to decrease effort once a team has been eliminated from playoff considerations because of the entry draft. Our results show that teams react to these dual incentives - they win more games when there is still a chance to reach the playoffs and lose more after being eliminated from playoff considerations. One can argue that losing more games after having no more chance to reach the playoffs could be the result of lower motivation or disappointment. This is the first study to show that this is not the only explanation for a higher amount of lost games. Instead, we find that there is a concrete strategy behind losing.

Keywords: National Hockey League; Tournaments; Dual incentives; Strategic losing; Sport data; Natural field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 L83 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:75:y:2019:i:pb:s0167487017306001

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2018.07.004

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