Experimental methods: Measuring effort in economics experiments

Charness, Gary; Gneezy, Uri; Henderson, Austin

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2018.02.024

Cited by 94 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…where their payoffs are exclusively non-environmental (e.g., Andersson et al, 2018;219 Handberg and Angelsen, 2019;Narloch et al, 2012). Real-effort tasks can add validity 220 to experimental research concerned with behavior in a particular applied context 221 (Charness et al, 2018), and they have recently become popular in conservation 222 research with natural resource users in the field (Jindal et al, 2017;Nelson et al, 223 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

Effectiveness and equity of Payments for Ecosystem Services: Real-effort experiments with Vietnamese land users

Loft

Gehrig²,

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract:Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are widespread in conservation policy. In PES, environmental effectiveness and social equity are often perceived as conflicting goals. Empirical studies on the relationship between popular design features, such as payment differentiation and payment conditionality, and effectiveness and equity are scarce. Further, they struggle with measuring and separating ecological and equity outcomes. In this study, we combine two incentivized lab-in-the-field experiments with 259 land users from eight villages in North-Western Vietnam to assess both individual conservation effort and community-level equity perceptions under four different PES designs. Effort is measured in a real-effort task with real-world environmental benefits; equity perceptions about payment designs in the real-effort task are measured in a coordination game. We demonstrate that payment design affects both effort and equity perceptions. Payments which are differentiated and are solely conditional on individuals' contributions of effort are perceived as most equitable. They are also more effective in motivating conservation effort than other designs, although the differences are small and not significant for all comparisons. By working out the positive correlation of effectiveness and equity across the four payment schemes, we show that these objectives are not necessarily conflicting goals in incentive-based conservation policy. Further, we can show that women exert greater conservation efforts. We discuss how greater equity and effectiveness could be achieved with reforms towards more input-based distribution criteria in Vietnam's PES legislation and the limitations and opportunities of the experimental paradigm for research on PES.

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confidence: 99%

Effectiveness and equity of Payments for Ecosystem Services: Real-effort experiments with Vietnamese land users

Loft

Gehrig²,

et al. 2018

Preprint

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“…what is required of other individuals) such that, despite the same actual demands, peoples perception of effort to meet programme requirements can be higher or lower (Kivetz and Simonson, 2003). Similarly, to the noted coarse-grained representation of effort in physical tasks, the same seems to be the case in economics; the directional relationships of actual effort and perception of effort is often similar, though the degree of congruency between the two is less clear (Charness et al, 2018). This has also been found for post-editing (Moorkens et al, 2015; Scarton et al, 2019) and listening tasks (Moore and Picou, 2018; Picou et al, 2017).…”

Section: Why Separate Actual Effort (Objective) and The Perception Ofmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…For effort in physical tasks many have considered this idea of task demands relative to capacity (e.g. Gamberale 39 . Indeed, both task demands and capacity (or 'ability') have been considered in discussion of the role 37 Despite Gamberale (1990) noting just prior that "…there is no objective counterpart to this perceptual phenomenon…" he subsequently states "… it also reflects real conditions such as the interplay between the requirements of the physical task and the capacity of the individual."…”

Section: Per Se < S M + E > S In Other Words If E Adds Itself To Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is (perception of) effort? Objective and subjective effort during attempted task performance

Steele¹

2020

Preprint

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Despite its apparent intuitiveness and widespread interest from across various fields, ‘effort’ is a variable that seems difficult to define. The purpose of this article is to consider and define ‘effort’ during task performance. In doing so I argue for a distinction between the actual effort (objective effort) required, and the perception of that effort (subjective effort), during intentional performance of tasks. I adopt a set theoretical approach to defining both actual and perceived effort as both constructs and concepts. Further, I aim to present discussion and definitions that are agnostic of the specific task demands being performed (i.e. physical, cognitive, self-control, or a combination of task demands) Throughout, I attempt to draw on and synthesise thoughts and ideas from across a multitude of disciplines (though note that this is not intended to be an exhaustive interdisciplinary review), engage in considerable armchair philosophising, and also offer what small insights I have from my own experience both as someone experiencing ‘effort’, and as a third-person observer investigating it. This work is intended to, at the very least, make my own current conceptualisation and understanding of ‘effort’ transparent to other researchers and aid in the interpretation of any subsequent empirical work on the topic. Further, I hope that it might be of use to researchers from the various fields interested in this topic, and assist in fostering opportunities for integration of learnings across disciplines. I hope that this work will allow for further understanding of the role of ‘effort’ and its perception from a broad scientific perspective.

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“…Future research could take different real effort tasks to investigate the behavioral effects of different forms of RPI and group compositions. Specifically, they could focus on boring tasks where varying performance levels are less attributable to differences in ability but rather to differences in effort (Charness et al 2018). Alternatively, differences in intrinsic motivation could be mitigated by a stronger RPI manipulation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Volume or value? How relative performance information affects task strategy and performance

Schreck

2020

J Bus Econ

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Employees face volume-value trade-offs when they perform tasks with multiple characteristics, leaving them with a choice between different strategies towards the goal of maximizing the total value of their output. Either they produce many, less valuable units of output (volume strategy); or fewer, more valuable units (value strategy). In such a situation, the provision of relative performance information (RPI) may be useful for both, motivating employees to exert high levels of effort, and helping them to find the optimal strategy relative to their individual abilities. The study investigates how useful two common forms of RPI-simple and detailed-are in improving the performance of employees who face volume-value trade-offs. In particular, it analyzes how group composition in terms of the group members' relative abilities moderates the behavioral consequences of RPI. Results of a laboratory experiment suggest that the behavioral effects of RPI depend on group composition, indeed: While in homogeneous groups, performance is highest under simple RPI, in heterogeneous groups, performance is highest under detailed RPI.

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Experimental methods: Measuring effort in economics experiments

Cited by 94 publications

References 57 publications

Effectiveness and equity of Payments for Ecosystem Services: Real-effort experiments with Vietnamese land users

Effectiveness and equity of Payments for Ecosystem Services: Real-effort experiments with Vietnamese land users

What is (perception of) effort? Objective and subjective effort during attempted task performance

Volume or value? How relative performance information affects task strategy and performance

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