Process Utility in High-Stakes Competition

Arnaud Dupuy ()
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Arnaud Dupuy: University of Luxembourg

No 18625, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: We study how individuals trade off outcome (what) and process (how) utility in high-stakes strategic decisions. We exploit optimality conditions and high-frequency choices in professional tennis to derive nonparametric bounds on process utility and implement a structural approach to estimate player-specific preferences. Under mild shape restrictions, these bounds imply that a large majority of players place positive weight on process utility. Our structural estimates further show that most players systematically sacrifice success probabilities to increase process utility, generating economically meaningful effects on match outcomes and expected earnings.

Keywords: process utility; intrinsic motivation; outcome utility; salience weight; strategic behavior; nonparametric; structural estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C57 D01 D81 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-spo
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