Pedaling peers: The effect of targets on performance

Markus Baldauf; Joshua Mollner

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2019.09.018

Pedaling peers: The effect of targets on performance

Markus Baldauf, Joshua Mollner^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Managerial Economics, Decision Sciences and Operations

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Individuals facing competitive targets increase their effort but respond non-monotonically to the target's difficulty. We use a novel dataset of informal amateur cycling competitions to track the responses of individuals to competitively-set targets (in the form of displacement from the top of a leaderboard). Modeling the choice problem of these individuals, we derive a set of testable hypotheses. We find, as predicted by the model, that individuals compete sooner and more intensely after displacement. As our main result, we find an inverted-U relationship between the increase in effort and the size of the displacement.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	90-103
Number of pages	14
Journal	Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume	167
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2019.09.018
State	Published - Nov 2019

Keywords

Effort choice
Peer competition
Rank incentives
Targets

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

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10.1016/j.jebo.2019.09.018

Cite this

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title = "Pedaling peers: The effect of targets on performance",

abstract = "Individuals facing competitive targets increase their effort but respond non-monotonically to the target's difficulty. We use a novel dataset of informal amateur cycling competitions to track the responses of individuals to competitively-set targets (in the form of displacement from the top of a leaderboard). Modeling the choice problem of these individuals, we derive a set of testable hypotheses. We find, as predicted by the model, that individuals compete sooner and more intensely after displacement. As our main result, we find an inverted-U relationship between the increase in effort and the size of the displacement.",

keywords = "Effort choice, Peer competition, Rank incentives, Targets",

author = "Markus Baldauf and Joshua Mollner",

note = "Funding Information: First Version: June 15, 2013. We thank Timothy Bresnahan, {\O}ystein Daljord, Liran Einav, Han Hong, Dan Knoepfle, Matthew Jackson, Petra Moser, Muriel Niederle, and Florian Scheuer. We thank Yingxiang Li for excellent research assistance. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number OCI-1053575. Baldauf gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 Elsevier B.V.",

year = "2019",

month = nov,

doi = "10.1016/j.jebo.2019.09.018",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "167",

pages = "90--103",

journal = "Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization",

issn = "0167-2681",

publisher = "Elsevier",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Pedaling peers

T2 - The effect of targets on performance

AU - Baldauf, Markus

AU - Mollner, Joshua

N1 - Funding Information: First Version: June 15, 2013. We thank Timothy Bresnahan, Øystein Daljord, Liran Einav, Han Hong, Dan Knoepfle, Matthew Jackson, Petra Moser, Muriel Niederle, and Florian Scheuer. We thank Yingxiang Li for excellent research assistance. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number OCI-1053575. Baldauf gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

PY - 2019/11

Y1 - 2019/11

N2 - Individuals facing competitive targets increase their effort but respond non-monotonically to the target's difficulty. We use a novel dataset of informal amateur cycling competitions to track the responses of individuals to competitively-set targets (in the form of displacement from the top of a leaderboard). Modeling the choice problem of these individuals, we derive a set of testable hypotheses. We find, as predicted by the model, that individuals compete sooner and more intensely after displacement. As our main result, we find an inverted-U relationship between the increase in effort and the size of the displacement.

AB - Individuals facing competitive targets increase their effort but respond non-monotonically to the target's difficulty. We use a novel dataset of informal amateur cycling competitions to track the responses of individuals to competitively-set targets (in the form of displacement from the top of a leaderboard). Modeling the choice problem of these individuals, we derive a set of testable hypotheses. We find, as predicted by the model, that individuals compete sooner and more intensely after displacement. As our main result, we find an inverted-U relationship between the increase in effort and the size of the displacement.

KW - Effort choice

KW - Peer competition

KW - Rank incentives

KW - Targets

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DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2019.09.018

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VL - 167

SP - 90

EP - 103

JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

ER -

Pedaling peers: The effect of targets on performance

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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