IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v116y2012i3p363-366.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Shirking and “choking” under incentive-based pressure: A behavioral economic theory of performance production

Author

Listed:
  • Sanders, Shane
  • Walia, Bhavneet

Abstract

Significant empirical evidence exists within psychology and economics that greater incentives under pressure can lead to lower performance outcomes. However, standard economic theory does not account for this possibility. Efficiency wage models, for example, conclude a positive relationship between wage incentives and productivity. While efficiency wage models are shown to describe productivity behavior in numerous settings, said models do not describe labor markets featuring (counterproductive) performance pressure. We put forth a theoretical model of performance production in which performance incentives induce productive effects and counterproductive effects. The model treats explicit monitoring and distraction as distinct, counterproductive processes within a cohesive theory of performance production. In settings featuring performance pressure, we find that higher levels of performance-contingent compensation may decrease not only labor output (i.e., likelihood of task success) but also labor input (i.e., effort) if counterproductive processes decrease the marginal effectiveness of effort sufficiently. The latter finding challenges a common view that performance decrements under pressure occur despite greater effort levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Sanders, Shane & Walia, Bhavneet, 2012. "Shirking and “choking” under incentive-based pressure: A behavioral economic theory of performance production," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(3), pages 363-366.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:116:y:2012:i:3:p:363-366
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2012.03.030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176512001267
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2012.03.030?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Immink, Maarten D. C. & Viteri, Fernando E., 1981. "Energy intake and productivity of Guatemalan sugarcane cutters : An empirical test of the efficiency wage hypothesis part II," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 273-287, October.
    2. Yellen, Janet L, 1984. "Efficiency Wage Models of Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 200-205, May.
    3. Dohmen, Thomas J., 2008. "Do professionals choke under pressure?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 636-653, March.
    4. Dan Ariely & Uri Gneezy & George Loewenstein & Nina Mazar, 2009. "Large Stakes and Big Mistakes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(2), pages 451-469.
    5. Akerlof, George A, 1984. "Gift Exchange and Efficiency-Wage Theory: Four Views," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 79-83, May.
    6. Malcomson, James M, 1981. "Unemployment and the Efficiency Wage Hypothesis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 91(364), pages 848-866, December.
    7. Lawrence F. Katz, 1986. "Efficiency Wage Theories: A Partial Evaluation," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1, pages 235-290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1976. "The Efficiency Wage Hypothesis, Surplus Labour, and the Distribution of Income in L.D.C.s," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 185-207, July.
    9. Zheng Cao & Joseph Price & Daniel F. Stone, 2011. "Performance Under Pressure in the NBA," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(3), pages 231-252, June.
    10. Immink, Maarten D. C. & Viteri, Fernando E., 1981. "Energy intake and productivity of Guatemalan sugarcane cutters : An empirical test of the efficiency wage hypothesis part I," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 251-271, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carpenter, Jeffrey P. & Benscheidt, Kevin, 2019. "Advanced Counter-Biasing," IZA Discussion Papers 12253, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Mattie Toma, 2017. "Missed Shots at the Free-Throw Line," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(6), pages 539-559, August.
    3. Robert Lantis & Erik Nesson, 2024. "The Hot Hand in the NBA 3-Point Contest: The Importance of Location, Location, Location," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 25(3), pages 283-321, April.
    4. Nicolas Houy & Jean-Philippe Nicolaï & Marie Claire Villeval, 2020. "Always doing your best? Effort and performance in dynamic settings," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 89(3), pages 249-286, October.
    5. Benscheidt, Kevin & Carpenter, Jeffrey, 2020. "Advanced counter-biasing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 1-18.
    6. Luca De Angelis & J. James Reade, 2022. "Home advantage and mispricing in indoor sports’ ghost games: the case of European basketball," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2022-01, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    7. Christoph Buehren & Marvin Gabriel, 2021. "Performing best when it matters the most: Evidence from professional handball," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202119, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    8. Marius Ötting & Christian Deutscher & Sandra Schneemann & Roland Langrock & Sebastian Gehrmann & Hendrik Scholten, 2020. "Performance under pressure in skill tasks: An analysis of professional darts," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-21, February.
    9. Essl, Andrea & Jaussi, Stefanie, 2017. "Choking under time pressure: The influence of deadline-dependent bonus and malus incentive schemes on performance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 127-137.
    10. Bühren Christoph & Gabriel Marvin, 2023. "Performing best when it matters the most: evidence from professional handball," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 19(3), pages 185-203, September.
    11. Emmanuel Caiazzo & Claudio Chino & Raffaele Mattera & Chiara Scarfato, 2022. "Social pressure and home bias in football: evidence from Italy," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 1081-1091.
    12. Luca De Angelis & J. James Reade, 2023. "Home advantage and mispricing in indoor sports’ ghost games: the case of European basketball," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(1), pages 391-418, June.
    13. Christopher J. Boudreaux & Shane D. Sanders & Bhavneet Walia, 2017. "A Natural Experiment to Determine the Crowd Effect Upon Home Court Advantage," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 18(7), pages 737-749, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hélène Zajdela, 1990. "Le dualisme du marché du travail : enjeux et fondements théoriques," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 92(1), pages 31-42.
    2. Daniel Goller, 2023. "Analysing a built-in advantage in asymmetric darts contests using causal machine learning," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(1), pages 649-679, June.
    3. Franz, Wolfgang, 1993. "Unvollkommene Arbeitsmärkte in makroökonomischen Modellen: Eine Übersicht," Discussion Papers 1, University of Konstanz, Center for International Labor Economics (CILE).
    4. Harb-Wu, Ken & Krumer, Alex, 2019. "Choking under pressure in front of a supportive audience: Evidence from professional biathlon," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 246-262.
    5. William T. Dickens & Kevin Lang, 1992. "Labor Market Segmentation Theory: Reconsidering the Evidence," NBER Working Papers 4087, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Anne Perrot & André Zylberberg, 1989. "Salaire d'efficience et dualisme du marché du travail," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 40(1), pages 5-20.
    7. Klein Teeselink, Bouke & Potter van Loon, Rogier J.D. & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2020. "Incentives, performance and choking in darts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 38-52.
    8. Bhattacharyya, Chandril & Gupta, Manash Ranjan, 2020. "Union, Efficiency of Labour and Endogenous Growth," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 61(2), pages 170-202, December.
    9. Florian Lindner, 2017. "Choking under pressure of top performers: Evidence from biathlon competitions," Working Papers 2017-24, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    10. Giorgio Liotti & Marco Musella, 2021. "Flessibilit? e soddisfazione per il lavoro: Una riflessione generale," QUADERNI DI ECONOMIA DEL LAVORO, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 0(113), pages 13-27.
    11. Krumer, Alex, 2020. "Pressure versus ability: Evidence from penalty shoot-outs between teams from different divisions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    12. Fanzheng Yang & Yujiao Shi & Weiwei Weng, 2020. "Be proactive or inactive: The effects of systematic job riskiness on effort investment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(4), pages 599-607, June.
    13. René Brink & Pieter Ruys, 2008. "Technology driven organizational structure of the firm," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 481-503, October.
    14. Bühren Christoph & Gabriel Marvin, 2023. "Performing best when it matters the most: evidence from professional handball," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 19(3), pages 185-203, September.
    15. Georg Winckler, 1988. "Neustrukturierung der keynesianischen Theorie?," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 14(2), pages 183-195.
    16. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1990. "Macroeconomic Models with Equity and Credit Rationing," NBER Chapters, in: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment, pages 15-42, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Hickman, Daniel C. & Metz, Neil E., 2015. "The impact of pressure on performance: Evidence from the PGA TOUR," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 319-330.
    18. Daniel C. Hickman & Craig Kerr & Neil Metz, 2019. "Rank and Performance in Dynamic Tournaments: Evidence From the PGA Tour," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(4), pages 509-534, May.
    19. Gérard Ballot & Cyrille Piatecki, 1986. "Turnover, productivité et hiérarchie dans le marché interne du travail," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 37(2), pages 285-306.
    20. Stiglitz, J.E., 1985. "Economics of information and the theory of economic development," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 5(1), April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Performance incentives; Choking under pressure; Shirking under pressure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:116:y:2012:i:3:p:363-366. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.