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Stakes and Motivation in Tournaments: Playing When There is Nothing to Play for but Pride

Author

Listed:
  • Lionel Page

    (Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, & Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, England)

  • Katie Page

    (Department of Psychology, Heythrop College, University of London, England)

Abstract

Tournaments are an effective means of incentivising participants to ensure an optimal level of effort. However, situations can occur in tournaments where the final outcome of a given competitor does not depend on his/her future performance. Specifically, we study these specific situations in a data set of the group stages of European football club competitions from 1992 to 2009. We identify situations where teams are already sure to finish either first or last at the penultimate stage in the group. We show that such situations affect team performance in the last match, typically decreasing the performance of a team sure to finish first and increasing the performance of a team sure to finish last. The first finding is in line with the economic predictions yet provides interesting implications, namely that the schedule of the match order plays a significant role in the overall performance of the team. The second, counter-intuitive, finding is not well accommodated into the existing economics framework and thus we discuss two alternative explanations, one based on social pressure and the other on pride.

Suggested Citation

  • Lionel Page & Katie Page, 2009. "Stakes and Motivation in Tournaments: Playing When There is Nothing to Play for but Pride," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 445-464, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v39:y:2009:i:3:p:445-464
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Tim R. L. Fry & Guillaume Galanos & Alberto Posso, 2014. "Let's Get Messi? Top-Scorer Productivity in the European Champions League," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 61(3), pages 261-279, July.
    2. Fu, Qiang & Ke, Changxia & Tan, Fangfang, 2015. "“Success breeds success” or “Pride goes before a fall”?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 57-79.
    3. Fornwagner, Helena, 2019. "Incentives to lose revisited: The NHL and its tournament incentives," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PB).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    doping; economics of sport; illegal activities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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