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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Behav. Econ.
Sec. Culture and Ethics
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frbhe.2024.1455686

Gender differences in post-competition honestyan experimental analysis

Provisionally accepted
Marcus Giamattei Marcus Giamattei 1,2*Katharina Werner Katharina Werner 2,3
  • 1 Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
  • 2 University of Passau, Passau, Bavaria, Germany
  • 3 University of Cologne, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    While competition is an inherent element of most market activities and immanent in many organizations, competitive incentives may bring about negative externalities, such as unethical behavior. This study examines whether competition affects subsequent honesty in an unrelated task, focusing on gender differences. Our experiment, which includes a real effort task under piece rate and competitive compensation schemes, reveals no overall treatment effects on honesty. However, competition affects men and women differently: women become more honest, while men become (insignificantly) more dishonest. This results in a gender gap in post-competition honesty and, therefore, in payoffs, highlighting the importance of carefully designing incentive schemes that consider gender-specific responses.

    Keywords: spillover, competition, incentives, honesty, experiment

    Received: 27 Jun 2024; Accepted: 28 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Giamattei and Werner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Marcus Giamattei, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.