The effect of punishment on effort when delegating the effort decision is available

초록

We, in this study, experimentally investigate the effect of punishment on a decision-maker’s effort level when he or she has an option to delegate the decision to the other. Given that it has been widely found that decision-makers tend to render a positive value for the decision-right itself, the decision-maker could exert more efforts while keeping the decision-right to avoid punishment. However, it is also possible that the existence of punishment deteriorate the value of decision-right so that the decision-maker could delegate the decision-right itself to the other to avoid punishment. Our experimental results show that punishment tends to increase the decision-maker’s effort level while it does not significantly affect the decision-right. Moreover, this positive effect of punishment on the decision-maker’s increasing effort is found to be largely by the psychological burden attached to punishment rather than by a mere loss of material payoffs.

키워드