HOW DOES PEER PRESSURE AFFECT EDUCATIONAL INVESTMENTS?

ABSTRACT: When effort is observable to peers, students may try to avoid social penalties by conforming to prevailing norms. To test this hypothesis, we first consider a natural experiment that introduced a performance leaderboard into computer-based high school courses. The result was a 24 percent performance decline. The decline appears to be driven by a desire to avoid the leaderboard; top performing students prior to the change, those most at risk of appearing on the leaderboard, had a 40 percent performance decline, while poor performing students improved slightly. We next consider a field experiment that offered students complimentary access to an online SAT preparatory course. Sign-up forms differed randomly across students only in whether they said the decision would be kept private from clas

SUBMITTER: Bursztyn L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4698889 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature