Public Speaking Aversion

Thomas Buser and Huaiping Yuan ()
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Huaiping Yuan: University of Amsterdam, 1018 WB Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tinbergen Institute, 1082 MS Amsterdam, Netherlands

Management Science, 2023, vol. 69, issue 5, 2746-2760

Abstract: Fear of public speaking is very common, but we know little about its implications for individuals and organizations. We establish public speaking aversion as an economically relevant preference using three steps. First, we use laboratory and classroom experiments to show that preferences for speaking in public vary strongly across individuals with many participants willing to give up significant amounts of money to avoid giving a short presentation in front of an audience. Second, we introduce two self-reported items to elicit preferences for speaking in public through surveys. We show that these items are strongly related to choices in the incentivized laboratory experiment and that public speaking aversion is distinct from established traits and preferences, including extraversion. Third, we elicit these items in a survey of business and economics students and show that public speaking aversion predicts career expectations. Public speaking–averse individuals avoid careers in management consulting and are more attracted to data analyst and back office careers.

Keywords: public speaking; validated survey measures; human capital; career choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:69:y:2023:i:5:p:2746-2760

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