IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v170y2024ics0014292124001739.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lying in competitive environments: Identifying behavioral impacts

Author

Listed:
  • Dato, Simon
  • Feess, Eberhard
  • Nieken, Petra

Abstract

Incentive schemes based on relative performance provide high effort incentives, but may backfire by increasing incentives for misconduct. Previous literature supports this view by demonstrating that, as compared to individual incentive schemes based on absolute performance only, highly competitive environments are associated with higher degrees of lying and cheating. However, it is not clear if this is (mainly) driven by stronger financial incentives or by competition per se and its behavioral effects. We conduct an online experiment with competitive and individual incentive schemes in which the financial incentives to lie are held constant. From a behavioral perspective, a competitive environment may increase the willingness for misconduct via a desire-to-win, but may also decrease it via the negative payoff externality on competitors. Our results provide evidence of a significant lying-enhancing desire-to-win-effect and an insignificant lying-reducing negative externality effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Dato, Simon & Feess, Eberhard & Nieken, Petra, 2024. "Lying in competitive environments: Identifying behavioral impacts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:170:y:2024:i:c:s0014292124001739
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104844
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292124001739
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104844?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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Private information; Lying; Contest; Competition; Cheating;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    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:eecrev:v:170:y:2024:i:c:s0014292124001739. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/eer .

    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.