Journal Article

Patience, self-control and the demand for commitment: evidence from a large-scale field experiment

Authors

Publication date

Jul 2015

Summary

Patience and self-control are important non-cognitive skills that are associated with favorable educational, economic and social outcomes. This paper provides empirical evidence to inform discussions on possible educational interventions to make children more forward-looking or less present-biased, by putting forward a way to identify self-control problems in children and exploring the role of commitment devices in mitigating such problems. We report results from an experiment that measures planned allocations, the demand for a commitment device, and actual choices in the context of chocolate consumption over two days. The experiment is conducted as part of a large field study on children's preferences, which allows us to correlate behavior with variables related to the subjects’ socio-economic background and educational environment, as well as preference parameters elicited through other tasks and surveys. We find a large demand for commitment among children. In addition, we identify important correlations between patience, commitment demand and time inconsistency, as well as student-specific personality traits and outcomes such as school success.

Published in

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Volume and page numbers

115 , 111 -122

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2014.10.008

Subjects

Psychology, Young People, Education, and Child Development

Links

University of Essex, Albert Sloman Library Periodicals *restricted to University of Essex registered users* - http://serlib0.essex.ac.uk/record=b1646363~S5

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