Gender differences in sabotage: the role of uncertainty and beliefs

Simon Dato () and Petra Nieken
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Simon Dato: University of Bonn

Experimental Economics, 2020, vol. 23, issue 2, No 4, 353-391

Abstract: Abstract We study gender differences in relation to performance and sabotage in competitions. While we find no systematic gender differences in performance in the real effort task, we observe a strong gender gap in sabotage choices in our experiment. This gap is rooted in the uncertainty about the opponent’s sabotage: in the absence of information about the opponent’s sabotage choice, males expect to suffer from sabotage to a higher degree than females and choose higher sabotage levels themselves. If beliefs are exogenously aligned by implementing sabotage via strategy method, the gender gap in sabotage choices disappears. Moreover, providing a noisy signal about the sabotage level from which subjects might suffer leads to an endogenous alignment of beliefs and eliminates the gender gap in sabotage.

Keywords: Gender; Sabotage; Tournament; Belief formation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 J16 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Gender Differences in Sabotage: The Role of Uncertainty and Beliefs (2018)
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DOI: 10.1007/s10683-019-09613-2

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