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Limits on Regret as a Tool for Incentive Design

Araujo, Felipe and Imas, Alex and Wilson, Alistair J. (2024) Limits on Regret as a Tool for Incentive Design. (Submitted)

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Abstract

We demonstrate the pitfalls when extrapolating behavioral findings across different contexts and decision environments. We focus on regret theory and the use of "regret lotteries" for motivating behavior change. Here, findings from one-shot settings have been used to promote regret as a tool to boost incentives in recurrent decisions across many settings. Using theory and experiments, we replicate regret lotteries as the superior one-shot incentive; however, for repeated decisions the comparative static is entirely reversed. Moreover, the effects are extremely sensitive to details of regret implementation. Our results suggest caution should be used when designing incentive schemes that exploit regret.


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Details

Item Type: Article
Status: Submitted
Creators/Authors:
CreatorsEmailPitt UsernameORCID
Araujo, Felipefad220@lehigh.edu0000-0002-8763-0739
Imas, Alexaimas@uchicago.edu0000-0002-1651-7245
Wilson, Alistair J.alistair@pitt.edualistair0000-0001-8118-2376
Date: 20 July 2024
Date Type: Submission
Schools and Programs: Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Economics
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Economics > Economics Working Papers
Refereed: No
Official URL: https://sites.pitt.edu/~alistair/papers/RegretLimi...
Article Type: Research Article
Date Deposited: 23 Jul 2024 18:28
Last Modified: 23 Jul 2024 18:28
URI: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/46726

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