Not logged in.
Quick Search - Contribution
Contribution Details
| Type | Working Paper |
| Scope | Discipline-based scholarship |
| Title | Gender differences in willingness to compete: the role of public observability |
| Organization Unit | |
| Authors |
|
| Language |
|
| Institution | University of Zurich |
| Series Name | Working paper series / Department of Economics |
| Number | 257 |
| ISSN | 1664-7041 |
| Number of Pages | 18 |
| Date | 2017 |
| Abstract Text | A recent literature emphasizes the importance of the gender gap in willingness to compete as a partial explanation for gender differences in labor market outcomes. However, whereas experiments investigating willingness to compete typically do so in anonymous environments, real world competitions often have a more public nature, which introduces potential social image concerns. If such image concerns are important, we should expect public observability to further exacerbate the gender gap. We test this prediction using a laboratory experiment that varies whether the decision to compete, and its outcome, is publicly observable. Across four different treatments, however, all treatment effects are close to zero. We conclude that the public observability of decisions and outcomes does not exert a gnificant impact on male or female willingness to compete, indicating that the role of social image concerns related to competitive decisions may be limited. |
| Official URL | http://www.econ.uzh.ch/static/wp/econwp257.pdf |
| Related URLs | |
| PDF File |
Download from ZORA
|
| Export |
BibTeX
EP3 XML (ZORA)
|
| Keywords | Gender differences, competitiveness, social image, experiment, Geschlechtsunterschied, Wettbewerbsverhalten, Soziale Wahrnehmung, Sozialverhalten, Entscheidungsverhalten, Experiment |