HOW DOES PEER PRESSURE AFFECT EDUCATIONAL INVESTMENTS?
HOW DOES PEER PRESSURE AFFECT EDUCATIONAL INVESTMENTS?
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DOI：
10.1093/qje/qjv021
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发表时间：
2015-08-01
影响因子：
13.7
通讯作者：
Jensen, Robert
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bursztyn, Leonardo;Jensen, Robert
当同龄人可以看到学生的努力时，他们可能会试图通过遵守现行规范来避免社会惩罚。为了验证这一假设，我们首先考虑一个自然的实验，将性能排行榜引入基于计算机的高中课程。结果是业绩下降了24%。这种下降似乎是由避免排行榜的愿望驱动的;在改变之前，表现最好的学生，那些最有可能出现在排行榜上的学生，表现下降了40%，而表现不佳的学生略有改善。接下来，我们考虑一个现场实验，为学生提供免费的在线SAT预备课程。学生们的注册表格随机不同，只是他们是否说这个决定会对同学保密。在非荣誉课程中，当决定是公开的而不是私下的时，注册率低了11个百分点。荣誉班报名未受影响。对于参加荣誉班和非荣誉班的学生来说，他们的反应取决于他们在接受邀请时与哪些同龄人在一起，因此他们的决定将被透露给谁。当在一个非荣誉班（同龄人报名率很低）提供课程时，如果决定是公开的，他们报名的可能性要低15个百分点。但是，当在荣誉班（同龄人报名率很高）开设这门课程时，如果决定是公开的，他们报名的可能性要高出8个百分点。因此，学生在做决定时对同龄人的反应非常积极，这是普遍的规范。
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 classmates. In nonhonors classes, sign-up was 11 percentage points lower when decisions were public rather than private. Honors class sign-up was unaffected. For students taking honors and nonhonors classes, the response depended on which peers they were with at the time of the offer, and thus to whom their decision would be revealed. When offered the course in a nonhonors class (where peer sign-up rates are low), they were 15 percentage points less likely to sign up if the decision was public. But when offered the course in an honors class (where peer sign-up rates are high), they were 8 percentage points more likely to sign up if the decision was public. Thus, students are highly responsive to their peers are the prevailing norm when they make decisions.