Arbeitspapier
Leveraging social comparisons: The role of peer assignment policies
Using a large-scale real effort experiment, we explore whether and how different peer assignment mechanisms affect worker performance and stress. Letting individuals choose whom to compare to increases productivity to the same extent as a targeted exogenous matching policy aimed at maximizing motivational spillovers. These effects are significantly larger than those obtained through random assignment and their magnitude is comparable to the impact of monetary incentives that increase pay by about 10 percent. A downside of targeted peer assignment is that, unlike endogenous peer selection, it leads to a large increase in stress. We uncover the behavioral origins of these desirable effects of peer choice using a combination of choice data, text analysis and simulations. The key advantage of letting workers choose whom to compare to is that it allows those workers who want to be motivated to compare to a motivating peer while also permitting those for whom social comparisons have little benefits or are too stressful to avoid them. Altogether, our results highlight that policies should not only be compared regarding their effects on output, but also with respect to their potential unintended consequences.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: Working Paper ; No. 427
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Field Experiments
Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
Personnel Economics: Labor Management
- Subject
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Social comparisons
Productivity
Stress
Incentives
Real effort
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Senn, Julien
Schmitz, Jan
Zehnder, Christian
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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University of Zurich, Department of Economics
- (where)
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Zurich
- (when)
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2023
- DOI
-
doi:10.5167/uzh-231484
- Handle
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Senn, Julien
- Schmitz, Jan
- Zehnder, Christian
- University of Zurich, Department of Economics
Time of origin
- 2023
Other Objects (12)
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Venture capital industries and policies: Some cross-country comparisons
Assignment
Effective heuristics and meta-heuristics for the quadratic assignment problem with tuned parameters and analytical comparisons
Do peer firms impact corporate investment policies?
Leveraging the power of peer groups for refugee integration : a randomized field experiment comparing online and offline peer groups
Peer-to-peer Browser Connectivity: Leveraging WebRTC and the new WebTransport protocol to connect libp2p browser nodes.
Comparisons
Effects of High-Achieving Peers: Findings from a National High School Assignment System
Leveraging social comparisons: The role of peer assignment policies
Leveraging the Power of Peer Groups for Refugee Integration
Leveraging the potentials of peer learning : conceptual foundations and reference processes for peer learning
Class assignment and peer effects: evidence from brazilian primary schools
Venture capital industries and policies: Some cross-country comparisons
Assignment
Effective heuristics and meta-heuristics for the quadratic assignment problem with tuned parameters and analytical comparisons
Do peer firms impact corporate investment policies?
Leveraging the power of peer groups for refugee integration : a randomized field experiment comparing online and offline peer groups
Peer-to-peer Browser Connectivity: Leveraging WebRTC and the new WebTransport protocol to connect libp2p browser nodes.
Comparisons
Effects of High-Achieving Peers: Findings from a National High School Assignment System
Leveraging social comparisons: The role of peer assignment policies
Leveraging the Power of Peer Groups for Refugee Integration
Leveraging the potentials of peer learning : conceptual foundations and reference processes for peer learning
Class assignment and peer effects: evidence from brazilian primary schools
Venture capital industries and policies: Some cross-country comparisons
Assignment
Effective heuristics and meta-heuristics for the quadratic assignment problem with tuned parameters and analytical comparisons
Do peer firms impact corporate investment policies?
Leveraging the power of peer groups for refugee integration : a randomized field experiment comparing online and offline peer groups
Peer-to-peer Browser Connectivity: Leveraging WebRTC and the new WebTransport protocol to connect libp2p browser nodes.
Comparisons