Soft Commitments, Reminders and Academic Performance
2017
A large share of students in higher education graduates with delay or fails to obtain a degree at all. In our field experiment, students can sign a non-binding agreement and self-commit to staying on track for graduation. We provide first evidence that soft commitment devices can enhance educational progress and -- more generally -- improve the completion of complex tasks such as passing exams. A pure reminder treatment does not change behavior, suggesting that the effects are not driven by increased salience. As predicted by a simple decision model, we show that procrastinators benefit most from the soft commitment device.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
0
References
1
Citations
NaN
KQI