Measuring Preferences for Competition with Experimentally-Validated Survey Questions

Francesco Fallucchi, Daniele Nosenzo and Ernesto Reuben

No 12867, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We validate experimentally a new survey item to measure the preference for competition. The item, which measures participants' agreement with the statement "Competition brings the best out of me", predicts individuals' willingness to compete in the laboratory after controlling for their ability, beliefs, and risk attitude (Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007). We further validate the explanatory power of our survey item outside of the laboratory, by comparing responses across two samples with predicted differences in their preference for competition: professional athletes and non-athletes. As predicted, we find that athletes score higher on the item than non-athletes.

Keywords: competition; survey question; experiment validation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D90 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, 178, 402-423

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Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring preferences for competition with experimentally-validated survey questions (2021)
Journal Article: Measuring preferences for competition with experimentally-validated survey questions (2020)
Working Paper: Measuring preferences for competition with experimentally-validated survey questions (2019)
Working Paper: Measuring preferences for competition with experimentally-validated survey questions (2019)
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