On the Effects of Relative Performance Feedback in a Risk Elicitation Task : Evidence From a Lab Experiment

This paper experimentally investigates the influence of different non-payoff-relevant feedback regimes on motivation, competitiveness and risk-taking behaviors in a risk elicitation task. We explore four feedback regimes: private feedback, full ranking feedback, top-5 ranking feedback, and non-ranking feedback based on the median performance of peers. We found that providing relative performance feedback increases risk-taking behavior, especially when using a top-5 ranking. Feedback regimes that provide a user with rank-based feedback have adverse effects on the users' attitudes as they increase competitiveness while failing to increase intrinsic motivation and performance motivation. In contrast, non-ranking feedback like the median feedback increases intrinsic motivation and does not influence competitiveness and risk-taking. Across all treatment groups, introducing relative performance feedback rules out the importance of a monetary compensation. From a management perspective, these results suggest that in situations where high risk decisions are problematic, non-ranking feedback should be preferred over rank-based feedback regimes