Performance effects of setting a high reference point for peer-performance comparison

Henry Eyring and V.G. Narayanan

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We conduct a field experiment, based on a registered report accepted by the Journal of Accounting Research, to test performance effects of setting a high reference point for peer-performance comparison. Relative to providing the median as a reference point for online students to compare themselves to, providing the top quartile: damps performance for those below the median; boosts performance for those between the median and top quartile; and, in the case of outcome but not process comparison, boosts performance for those above the top quartile. We do not find that either reference point yields a greater average performance effect. However, providing the more effective reference point in each partition of initial performance yields a 40% greater performance effect than providing either reference point uniformly. Students access the online courses intermittently over the span of a year. Our effects derive from small portions of our treatment groups—5% in the case of process comparison and 26% in the case of outcome comparison—who accessed treatment and who were, on average, more active leading up to and during our intervention

Keywords: relative performance information; reference points; performance; social comparison (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D91 I21 M41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2018-05-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published in Journal of Accounting Research, 30, May, 2018, 56(2), pp. 581 - 615. ISSN: 0021-8456

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:86732

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