Hard vs. soft commitments: Experimental evidence from a sample of French gamblers *

Paul Bettega, Paolo Crosetto, Dimitri Dubois (dimitri.dubois@umontpellier.fr) and Rustam Romaniuc
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Dimitri Dubois: CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier
Rustam Romaniuc: Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School

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Abstract: People use commitment devices to formalize and facilitate their goals. Self-commitments are ubiquitous and may take different forms: soft, when the commitment can be broken at a low cost, or hard, when that cost is high. The effects of soft and hard commitments have usually been studied separately. We conduct an online experiment with 1527 individuals representative of a big gambling company's client population to study the comparative effects of hard and soft commitment devices in a risk taking game. Our results show that asking for a hard limit leads subjects to reduce their risk-taking even when the limit turns out to be non-binding, i.e., the commitment is ex-post soft. Hard commitments lead to slightly lower levels of risk taking.

Keywords: soft commitment; hard commitment; risk taking; self-control JEL Codes: C93; D02; D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-04193948v1
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Related works:
Working Paper: Hard vs. soft commitments: Experimental evidence from a sample of French gamblers (2024)
Working Paper: Hard vs. soft commitments: Experimental evidence from a sample of French gamblers (2023)
Working Paper: Hard vs. soft commitments: Experimental evidence from a sample of French gamblers * (2023)
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