Gender differences in willingness to compete: the role of public observability

Thomas Buser, Eva Ranehill and Roel van Veldhuizen

No 257, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: A recent literature emphasizes the importance of the gender gap in willingness to compete as a partial explanation for gender differences in labor market outcomes. However, whereas experiments investigating willingness to compete typically do so in anonymous environments, real world competitions often have a more public nature, which introduces potential social image concerns. If such image concerns are important, we should expect public observability to further exacerbate the gender gap. We test this prediction using a laboratory experiment that varies whether the decision to compete, and its outcome, is publicly observable. Across four different treatments, however, all treatment effects are close to zero. We conclude that the public observability of decisions and outcomes does not exert a gnificant impact on male or female willingness to compete, indicating that the role of social image concerns related to competitive decisions may be limited.

Keywords: Gender differences; competitiveness; social image; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Gender differences in willingness to compete: The role of public observability (2021)
Journal Article: Gender differences in willingness to compete: The role of public observability (2021)
Working Paper: Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete: The Role of Public Observability (2017)
Working Paper: Gender differences in willingness to compete: The role of public observability (2017)
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