The effect of losing a competition: the role of gender, unfairness and feedback

2021-05-20

2021-06-30

1) Gender gap in tournament entry, within a given treatment and also across treatments, both for the full sample and for round-2 losers only.

2) Beliefs about own performances

3) Variation in gender gap within treatments with observables characteristics

1) Gender gap in tournament entry, within a given treatment and also across treatments for round-2 winners only.

We conduct an online experiment on Prolific in which participants work on a real effort task for three rounds. In the first round they receive piece rate pay, in the second they take part in a two-person tournament and in the third round they choose between tournament and piece rate pay. Prior to making their tournament entry decision in round 3, participants receive feedback whether or not they won the previous round's tournament. We vary whether the tournament in round 2 is fair (the best performer wins) or unfair (the best performer might lose) and, for unfair tournaments, vary whether participants find out whether they won or lost fairly or unfairly. We also elicit performance beliefs prior to the tournament entry decision, and collect socio-economic characteristics and personality traits in a final questionnaire.

In our experiment participants are randomly assigned to one of three treatments. Each treatment consists of three effort tasks and concludes with a questionnaire. Treatments are explained in detail below.

Neutral Treatment:
Each player plays three main tasks of 90 seconds each. Only one randomly chosen task will be payoff-relevant. In task 1, participants perform a real effort task in which they have to count the number of zeros (0) in ten tables consisting of zeros (0) and ones (1) (Apicella et al., 2017). They are paid according to a piece rate that pays 0.15 pounds per table they solve correctly. In task 2 participants work on the same task but are paid according to a tournament rate that pays 0.30 pounds if the participant’s score (which is the number of tables they solve correctly) exceeds the score of another randomly selected player who has already played the task. Before task 3 is played, we ask players to consider their performance in task 2 and guess their rank compared to other 100 participants in task 2. We call this task the ”Guessing task”. This task is incentivized. We pay a base payment of 0.50 pounds, with a penalty of 0.02 pounds times the absolute difference between the true rank and the stated (guessed) rank. Subsequently participants are given a neutral feedback, i.e., “you won/lost in the tournament”. In task 3, participants work on the same task but before that, they can choose between the piece rate and tournament payment. If the latter is chosen, participants’ scores are matched with the scores of other players who already played the task (different from the opponent in task 2). This guarantees that participants’ decisions in task 3 do not impose an externality on earnings of others.

Unfair Treatment
It is analogous to the “Neutral Treatment” except that before completing task 2, participants are told that in 50% of the cases the winner of the tournament will be the one with the higher score (i.e.: the actual winner) while in the remaining 50% of the cases the winner will be randomly chosen. This means that there is a 25% chance that the player with the highest score will lose undeservedly. Feedback is the same as in the neutral treatment. Since no feedback is given about which of the two above-described scenarios has occurred, participants do not know whether they won/lost deservedly or undeservedly. The tournament in task 3 (if chosen) will be a fair (neutral) tournament in order to both keep the treatments as similar as possible and to avoid that preferences for fair (neutral) competitive environment could play a role in task 3’s decision. This treatment reproduces the features of many real world situations where individuals do not always know whether they won/lost because someone had an unfair advantage or not.

Unfair Feedback Treatment
It is analogous to the “Unfair Treatment” except that players are now told whether they won/lost deservedly or undeservedly the tournament in Task 2. Participants also receive feedback about their true rank in the “Guessing task”.

The experiment ends with a questionnaire asking questions about willingness to take risk, about whether participants think that men or women are better in the counting zero task, socio-economic variables, family background, athletic/sport experience, as well as perception of unfairness and competitive attitudes.

Randomization done by Prolific online platform's algorithm

Individual

No

Between 1200 and 1800 participants.

Our target sample size is between 1200 and 1800 participants.

400-600 participants in each of the three treatments, spread evenly across both genders.

see Analysis plan

Pre analysis plan