Conditioning the effect of prize on tournament self-selection

David Pastoriza, Inés Alegre and Miguel A. Canela

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2021, vol. 86, issue C

Abstract: This study examines how past performance moderates the effect of the size of the prize on tournament self-selection. We identify two types of trajectories that play simultaneous and unique roles in moderating the influence of prize on an agent’s decision to enter a tournament: within-period trajectory, which reflects an agent’s short-term performance streak in the tournaments recently entered, and across-period trajectory, which reflects an agent’s long-term performance streak in the same tournament across different periods. We find that positive (negative) within-period and across-period trajectories strengthen (weaken) the positive effect of the size of the prize on tournament entry. Although both performance trajectories have a significant and sizable influence, we find that within-period trajectory plays the strongest moderating effect. We draw on the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic to explain our findings. We study these notions using 54,915 self-selection decisionsthat professional golfers have taken over a ten-year period (1996–2006) when entering PGA Tour tournaments. We draw implications for the craft of contest design.

Keywords: Self-selection; Tournaments; Performance trajectory; Heuristics; PGA Tour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:86:y:2021:i:c:s0167487021000490

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2021.102414

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