Gender differences in sabotage: the role of uncertainty and beliefs

• Published in: Experimental economics : a journal of the Economic Science Association Vol. 23; no. 2; pp. 353 - 391
• Main Authors: Dato, Simon, Nieken, Petra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.06.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Behavioral/Experimental Economics; Economic theory; Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods; Economics; Economics and Finance; Endogenous; Game Theory; Gender differences; Microeconomics; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Original Paper; Sabotage; Social and Behav. Sciences; Uncertainty; Belief formation; C91; Gender; Sabotage; Tournament; J16; M12
• ISSN: 1386-4157; 1573-6938
• DOI: 10.1007/s10683-019-09613-2

We study gender differences in relation to performance and sabotage in competitions. While we find no systematic gender differences in performance in the real effort task, we observe a strong gender gap in sabotage choices in our experiment. This gap is rooted in the uncertainty about the opponent’s sabotage: in the absence of information about the opponent’s sabotage choice, males expect to suffer from sabotage to a higher degree than females and choose higher sabotage levels themselves. If beliefs are exogenously aligned by implementing sabotage via strategy method, the gender gap in sabotage choices disappears. Moreover, providing a noisy signal about the sabotage level from which subjects might suffer leads to an endogenous alignment of beliefs and eliminates the gender gap in sabotage.